Superhero Movie (2008)

Director:

Craig Mazin

Writer (WGA):

Craig Mazin (written by)

Release Date:

28 March 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

The greatest Superhero movie of all time! (not counting all the others)

Plot:

A send-up of superhero films, from Batman Begins to Fantastic Four. |

Plot Keywords:

Scientist | School Bus | Fart | Banquet | Laboratory

US Showtimes:

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Cast

Drake Bell	...	Rick Riker / Dragonfly
Sara Paxton	...	Jill Johnson
Christopher McDonald	...	Lou Landers / Hourglass
Leslie Nielsen	...	Uncle Albert Adams
Kevin Hart	...	Trey
Marion Ross	...	Aunt Lucille Adams
Ryan Hansen	...	Lance Landers
Keith David	...	The Chief of Police
Brent Spiner	...	Dr. Strom
Robert Joy	...	Dr. Stephen Hawking
Jeffrey Tambor	...	Dr. Whitby
Robert Hays	...	Blaine Riker
Nicole Sullivan	...	Julia Riker
Sam Cohen	...	Young Rick Riker
Tracy Morgan	...	Professor Xavier

Also Known As:

Superhero! (USA) (working title)
Film de super-héros (Canada: French title) [fr]
Super Héros Movie (France) [fr]
Superhero Movie (Greece) [el]
Suprhrdina (Czech Republic) [cs]

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, comic violence, drug references and language.

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Certification:

Ireland:15A | Australia:M | Philippines:PG-13 (MTRCB) | Finland:K-13 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #44303) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) | Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) | Singapore:PG (cut) | Canada:13+ (Quebec)

Filming Locations:

Universal Studios - 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California, USA

Company:

Dimension Films

Trivia:

Not screened for critics.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: During the Youtube scene, you can see the video time is 22:00, instead of 00:22.

Quotes:

Uncle Albert: With great power comes... ow!
Rick Riker: Great responsibility? Try to breathe!
Uncle Albert: I can't. You're kneeling on my balls!

Movie Connections:

References The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

Soundtrack:

I Need A Hero

Worse then you feared

Okay so with David Zucker attached to this film (only as a producer), a lot of people may have heard the name and mistaken this for one of his actual films. Well be warned, this is one of those cheap nasty "comedies" that try and con people into the theaters and then just spew out regurgitated comedy by numbers while hardly deviating from the plot of whatever movie they have chosen to parody (or rip off may be better). This is not a touch even on the weaker Zucker films of later years and seems to be from the minds of people that have only heard of comedy but never really understood how it works. Shame on Zucker for putting his name on this rubbish.

If that wasn't bad enough, this movie is a parody of the first spiderman movie. Yes the one that came out six years ago and has had two sequels since then. So it doesn't even manage to be topical. Had this come out in 2003 it may have at least scored points for being relevant (which would have still made the film disposable with no chance of anyone remembering it years later, but for the first viewing some of the direct parody may have amused people briefly). Sure they threw in the odd additional hero, but only as quick visual gags with no real depth and most of those characters were direct copies of the characters they parodied and played out the most obvious jokes. Essentially the film is a highly stripped down copy of Spiderman with a handful of jokes thrown in.

Of course we should have suspected. When they were hyping this they talked about it like it was the first superhero comedy, while that is a long way from the mark. My suggestion if you want to see an actually good superhero comedy is to check out "Mystery Men" instead.

Finally a word about Leslie Nielson. You should have figured by now that Leslie will pretty much do anything. While his skill at delivering any line or action with a straight face is second to none, that ability alone doesn't make for good comedy. He needs the right script and like many of his comedies this wasn't it. Having said that, he is still probably the funniest thing in this movie, but then he could have achieved that had he just stood in an empty room and read a bus time table to us.