Cinema
Superhero Movie (12A) **
SOMEBODY ought to explain to filmmaker Craig Mazin that in Hollywood, you have to respond quickly to audiences' changing tastes.
It's vital to strike while the iron is hot, especially with vast sums of money riding on the opening weekend box office.
So writing and directing a spoof of Spider-Man, complete with a smutty recreation of the upside down kiss in the rain, some six years after the web-slinging superhero first swung onto the big screen is a completely pointless exercise.
During a class trip, student Rick Riker is bitten by a genetically engineered dragonfly, investing him with the nifty superpowers of the creature.
Struggling to conceal his secret identity as the masked Dragonfly from Uncle Albert and Aunt Lucille, Rick puts his new found skills to good use and sweeps next door neighbour Jill off her feet.
Unfortunately, Dragonfly meets his match in The Hourglass, the dastardly alter ego of megalomaniac Dr Lou Lander.
"You're crazy!" shrieks one of Lander's goons.
"No, crazy is hearing voices, talking cats, dating Paul Abdul," rages the doctor, "I'm a visionary!"
The scene is lazily set for a titanic battle in chafing Lycra for the future of mankind.
Superhero Movie delivers its biggest laugh with that hoary old chestnut, the fart gag, while Rick and Jill play out a drippy love scene.
That's as sophisticated as the humour gets with Mazin, who co-wrote Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4, taking aim at all the obvious targets, even cajoling Pamela Anderson into a thankless cameo as The Invisible Girl.
A parody of Tom Cruise fails to raise a chuckle and the relentless mockery of Dr Stephen Hawking is one oafish parody too far.
Naked Gun funnyman Leslie Nielsen, who delivers his usual goofy performance as the daft old coot who confides to his nephew: "I believe in you like your father did, I love you like your father did, I had sex with your mother just like your father did."
Too much information; alas, none of it interesting.
See it at Odeon, Empire
12:01pm Friday 6th June 2008
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