Superhero Movie

I loved Scary Movie. Even Scary Movie 2 was pretty damn funny. The next two Scary Movie's...yeah...well, they were watchable I suppose. Then we had a slew of spoofs made by some people vaguely associated with Scary Movie - Not Another Teen Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, blah, blah, blah. And they got progressively worse. I saw Epic Movie. I bitterly regret that I will never get that part of my life back, I tell you. The trailer for Meet The Spartans said to me "all the funny bits are in the trailer", and it wasn't a funny trailer.

That said I actually chuckled at the trailer for Superhero Movie, and thought, maybe I'll give this one a go, fully expecting to gnaw my arm off rather than sit through a turd of a movie. Well, to my surprise it wasn't shit. In fact there were a few moments that actually made me laugh out loud.

These kinds of movies are great for television actors because TV actors don't stretch the budget of a movie, and consequently we can get a few stuck in there. Brent Spiner (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars), Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons) are just three of the stars, and I have to say that, rather bizarrely, Spiner is actually funny for a change. I suspected Hansen would be and Castellaneta obviously is. Christopher McDonald puts in an appearance as well, so obviously he's getting desperate for work.

Anyway the thing that most benefits this movie rather than the other crap that went before it, is that like Scary Movie, it really only tries to parody one movie - Spiderman. Certainly there are other references in there, and small little spoofs, but mostly the movie is a coherent structure that centers around the events of Spiderman. As a result, you don't see things just happening for no reason, and scenes that are put in the movie simply because someone thought it would be funny. The ending, in which a group of peaceful world leaders break out into an almighty brawl is more reminiscient of Naked Gun, which is perhaps unsurprising as not only does Leslie Nielsen feature in the movie, but it was, of course, from the same production team. Admittedly there is a lot of hilarity in seeing Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu fight, but I can't help thinking they may have gone too far with poor Stephen Hawking's jokes.

All in all, I wasn't disappointed with this film and I'm happy I went to see it at the cinema. Gave me quite a laugh.
"B-"