movies
BY MOLLY TEMPLETON
Anything But
No powers and little fun in Super
SUPER:
Written and directed by James
Gunn. Cinematography, Steve Gainer. Editor, Cara
Silverman. Music, Tyler Bates. Starring Rainn Wilson,
Ellen Page, Liv Tyler and Kevin Bacon. IFC Midnight,
2011. 96 minutes. Unrated. 44111
W
hile there’s something to be said
for — and enjoyed about —
the casting of Kevin Bacon as
a skeevy drug dealer/wife stealer/generic
bad dude, there’s little else about writer-
director James Gunn’s Super that makes
me want to say much of anything. Mostly, I
want to give this movie the bird. The story
of an ordinary schlub who turns himself
into a costumed vigilante after a vision of/
from God (and Nathan Fillion as a cheerily
smug religious television superhero), Super
is another fi lm that enjoys trying to make
the audience feel like worthless creeps for
wanting to watch it. Like Sucker Punch,
Super makes the audience complicit in its
semi-lucid commentary on exactly what
it’s dishing out. Like superheroes? Comic
books? Cartoon violence? What the hell is
the matter with you? Don’t you realize that
violence is actually messy and vile, not
stylized and sleek?
Gunn (Slither) clearly knows and likes
comics, which is part of what makes
Super such a frustrating, disjointed
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viewing experience. The fi lm’s characters
are universally loathsome, from needy,
whiny Frank (Rainn Wilson), who
becomes the Crimson Bolt after his wife
leaves him for Bacon’s Jaques, to Libby
(Ellen Page), whose sole character trait is
that she’s thoughtless and inappropriate.
Where Frank wants to rid the world of
evil and get back the girl, Libby, who
positions herself as Frank’s sidekick after
she learns his secret identity, just wants
to beat the shit out of people. If you root
for her, you’re siding with a sociopathic
twentysomething who tears into a random
bad guy with her Wolverine claws. If
you root against her, you’re hating on a
misguided young woman who works in
a comic book store and probably would
never have taken a sculpture to the head
of a classmate if not for Frank’s example.
Page dives headlong into Libby, and her
performance works — she’s even more
disturbing than she was in the excellent
Hard Candy — but to what end? Is it
mockery or sincerity? Satire, send-up or
straightforward story of a man unhinged
by loss (and a young woman just purely
unhinged)? Gunn transforms his semi-
funny superhero-ribbing into an uber-
violent bloodbath and nearly pulls off a
faux-inspiring closure that really, really
has to be sarcastic but made me facepalm
in the theater nonetheless. Super is
successful at shifting gears, but the whole
thing feels punishing — to the audience,
the characters, the genre.
ew
Super opens Friday, April 22, at the Bijou.
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