‘Superhero Movie’ – as funny as it is heroic
The superhero, and I don’t mean sandwich, has been a staple of the popular culture since well before the Depression-into-wartime beginnings of Superman and Batman. Those characters’ nascent comic-book adventures of 1938-1939 served primarily to focus a popular fascination with superhuman struggles against extravagant menaces — but similarly conceived protagonists had existed all along in ancient mythology and popular fiction. And how better to explain the superior heroic intellects of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Seabury Quinn’s phantom-fighting Jules de Grandin, or the beyond-normal escapades of Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernel?
People need heroes. Such characters trigger the imagination to assume hope in the face of fearful real-world circumstances, even if their activities and abilities seem patently outside the realm of possibility. And the spiritual generosity of superheroism is such that people are willing to pay to experience the fantasy: Hence the proliferation of super-hero comic books in the immediate backwash of Superman and Batman, and hence those charactersÂ’ fairly prompt leap into motion pictures during the 1940s.
Many people regard the superhero movie phenomenon as a fairly recent development, traceable as “far back” as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man breakthrough of 2002 (from Marvel Comics’ long-running series), or maybe to the perceived “antiquity” of Richard Donner’s Superman pictures of 1978-1980. Not by a long shot.
Nor are the inevitable superhero parodies — as seen in David Zucker’s collaborative production of Superhero Movie, due March 28 — any particular innovation. Just as there is something awe-inspiring about some guy in long-john tights, hurdling buildings and piercing the veil with blasts of X-ray vision, there also is something innately ridiculous about such a spectacle. Even some of the earlier superhero films, such as Columbia Pictures’ Batman serials of the 1940s, emerged as unwitting parodies despite (or because of) their more earnest intentions.
The formal parodies are a rarer breed. Zucker had proved himself a capable spoofer with 1980’s Airplane! — a well-received lampoon of the large-ensemble disaster-movie genre — much as Mel Brooks had parodied such genres as the Western epic and the Gothic horror film (1974’s Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein) to pleasing effect. Both artists were springing from the influence of Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad magazine of the mid-century, with its recurring demonstration that a parody must harbor an affectionate understanding of the story it intends to spoof.
Zucker has suffered the occasional lapse in recent years, and his involvement as director of two Scary Movie sequels (2003-2006) — with their skit-like pageantry of send-ups, as opposed to a sustained narrative — suggests a general decline in Hollywood’s ability to turn a popular genre inside-out with laughter. With Superhero Movie, co-producer Zucker and writer-director Craig Mazin have recaptured a vibe very much like that of the original Airplane!
Recalling the genre-savvy sensibilities of Kinka Usher’s impressive Mystery Men (1999; from Bob Burden’s comic-book stories), Superhero Movie exaggerates the stock-in-trade devices of such recent comics-based hits as the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and Batman movies to an extent that one Web-log reviewer likens to “watching Spider-Man in a fun-house mirror.” A sturdy basis in sustained storytelling — Drake Bell’s Norman Normal leading character develops superhuman powers, which render normalcy irrelevant — recalls the familiar story-arc of the Spiderman series but leaves room for references to various other costumed-hero franchises. Mazin’s screenplay bespeaks a tremendous fondness for the idiom in its natural state.
A well-cast ensemble follows suit. Sara Paxton appears as a spirited romantic interest for BellÂ’s costumed Dragonfly. Chris McDonald makes a suitably absurd surrogate for the first Spiderman pictureÂ’s chief villain. Brent Spiner takes a mad-scientist role beyond madness. Leslie Nielsen, a Zucker-troupe mainstay since 1980, steals the show as an arrogant big shot.
Technical credits, too, are up to snuff, particularly in a jaw-dropping set-piece built around a runaway mass-transit vehicle and the obstacles in its path. Jerry ZuckerÂ’s long-term influence is sufficient to validate his career; that influence is particularly evident in recent films by the English parodists Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, notably Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead. But it is especially rewarding to find Zucker reasserting his mastery with Superhero Movie.
The film is as funny as its generally flagging subgenre needs it to be. And heroically so. (PG-13)
At the Modern Art Museum
Ira SachsÂ’ edgy comedy of manners Married Life is due March 28-30 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Brilliant ensemble-cast work and a tense blurring of the fine line between comedy and tragedy distinguish the tale of an adulterer contemplating murder as an alternative to divorce. Particularly fine work here from Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan.
Showings: 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. March 28; 5 p.m. March 29; and 2 p.m. and
4 p.m. March 30. (R)
Contact Price at mprice@bizpress.net
