1980 / 127 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Superman is probably the most American of all superheroes. I mean, in the more than fifty years that he has been around, I doubt any fictional character has come to stand more for everything American than Superman has. He stands for truth, justice, and the American way, for crying out loud.

So why is it that the ultimate, ass-kicking, phenomenal Superman movie has yet to be made. Batman is not nearly as highly regarded as The Supe and yet he has already had a tremendous film made on his behalf. So what is it with the Big Man? Why hasn’t anyone in Hollywood nailed it yet? I don’t know. But I do know that Superman 2 isn’t anywhere near what it could have been.

The first Superman had to introduce Superman to the masses, even though we all knew his story. But that is the job of a first film, so we all expected it. This one takes place where the first film left off. Superman has already saved the world once or twice. People rely on Superman to do it all the time now. And Superman has his hands full. At the beginning of this film we have a very rousing sequence in which Our Man rescues the entire city of Paris from a group of terrorists armed with a Hydrogen Bomb. It’s a very exciting scene, and it kicks the movie off to a promising start.

Then we meet a trio of Supervillains from the planet Krypton. They were imprisoned in a cheesy, floating square that floats through the depths of Space now that their planet is destroyed. The Supervillains escape from their floating square of Doom and proceed to kill some astronauts on the Moon. Again, we have a very promising scene. Oooh, these guys are bad news. Superman might be in trouble this time. After all, this isn’t some arrogant guy with a bad toupee, these are some people who might give Supe a run for his tights.

Speaking of the man with the bad rug, Lex Luthor escapes from prison using a hologram machine (Yeah, I didn’t get it either) and finds Superman’s hideaway near the North Pole. He conveniently discovers the secrets of Superman’s existence and also learns of the three villains. He then decides that he will try to win these bad guys over onto his side, with the hopes of ruling the world.

The villains then land on Earth and start tearing stuff up. They break a lot of things and destroy a lot of landmarks and make the president of the United States, played by another man in a really awful toupee, surrender to his wishes.

As all this is going down, Superman makes a deal with his dead parents (?) and becomes mortal so that he can romance Lois Lane. He did it all for the nookie. Once again, a hero demonstrates that the fate of the entire free world is nothing compared to getting some. This isn’t the Superman I know, folks.

This whole movie suffers from an overdose of cheese. The effects are cheesy, the dialogue is cheesy, the sets are cheesy, the moments of drama are extremely overblown, and as obvious as the toupee on the President’s shiny head. The fault does not lie on the actors. Gene Hackman brings a wonderful sheen of sliminess to his role as Lex Luthor, just as he did the first time around. In fact, he is the most interesting guy in the movie. Christopher Reeves takes the role of Superman and invests it with a great deal of humanity. He has horrible dialogue, but he does his best with it and one must admire him for the effort. Ditto for Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane. She never quite convinces us that she is worth Superman becoming mortal, but she does have a way with her scenes. Terrence Stamp, however, as the leader of the Supervillains. Well, he brings a bit of dignity to his role, but he still overacts the hell out of it. Then again, what can a man do with a role that requires him to dress in a shiny, black jumpsuit and blow a bus over.

There are some nice moments here. But they are lost in a sea of cornball dialogue and situations, overly melodramatic scenes, and the whole mystery of Clark Kent being Superman or not is given away much too quickly for my taste. They tell you at the end that they plan to make at least one more of these movies, so why let Lois know Superman’s identity in the SECOND movie? Isn’t that the sort of juicy development you’d want to save for a while? The Supervillain vs. Superman fight at the end is fairly exciting, but it is undermined by the fact that everyone in Metropolis seems to be a gigantic whiner. If I were Superman, I wouldn’t bother busting my ass for these people. They don’t seem to appreciate it anyway.

In short, this film has its moments, but if you are over the age of eight, you will probably be left wanting more.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2001 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.