Movie Review: Superhero Movie (Extended Edition)

Superhero Movie is a spoof of the recent superhero movie craze. Its main target is the Spiderman series, but it also parodies X-Men, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and more. The movie’s humor is not sophisticated; it is stupid and juvenile. In short, if you do not see the humor in a teenager being humped by all the animals in a test lab then this movie is not for you. If you do, this movie is reasonably enjoyable.

The movie’s main plot follows Spiderman 1 and 2 closely. Drake Bell plays Rick Riker, an underappreciated teen and soon-to-be superhero. While on a class trip, Rick is bitten by an experimental dragonfly. This gives him super powers; he acquires super strength along with sticky and armored skin. He does not acquire the ability to fly, but still takes the name Dragonfly. Meanwhile a scientist named Lou Landers (played by Christopher McDonald) is working on an anti-aging device. He discovers a way to regenerate his body – if he kills someone each day. He becomes the super-villain Hourglass. His evil plan is to kill enough people at with his device at once to no longer need regeneration. Quite obviously, the movie must end with Dragonfly standing off against Hourglass.

This type of movie is a bit hard to review because plot, character development, and theme are all meaningless. It ultimately comes down to whether you like the gags and the movie makes you laugh.

I did find a number of the gags quite amusing. In one, Rick and his love interest Jill (Sara Paxton) are having a tender amount. The gag is that it keeps getting interrupted by Aunt Lucille’s (Marion Ross) ridiculously loud and smelly farts. In another Dragonfly saves an old lady from being run over by a bus, only to push her into a wood chipper. The crowd congratulates him for his heroism, completely ignoring her fate.

Not all of the gags hit. At one point in the movie, Rick visits an X-men like academy; most of the X-men parodies are not very funny. Towards the end, too much of the movie is focused on finishing the plot, the gags become fewer and not as funny.

The thing I enjoy most about the movie is not that the jokes are particularly funny, it is that at times they come rapid-fire. Little giggles turned to full out uncontrollable laughter because the sheer amount of jokes.

I would be remiss not mention that Leslie Nielsen is another star of the movie. He plays Rick’s Uncle Albert as the typical Nielsen deadpan doofus. Not many other actors could pull off lines like ” I love you like your father did, I believe in you like your father did, and I had sex with your mother just like your father did.”

I enjoyed this movie, but did not think an extended edition was necessary. If you like the humor of other Nielsen parodies such as Wrongfully Accused and Airplane! you might want to check this movie out. If everything in this review sounded incredibly stupid and lame to you, do not bother watching it. Nevertheless, a movie does not have to be smart to be fun.

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