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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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A decent and mildy funny parody!
Rick (Drake Bell) is your baisc high school nerd who was bitten by a genetically enchanced dragonfly and has the abilities and powers of a dragonfly. He becomes an avenging superhero nicknamed Dragonfly and must protects the good citizens of Empire City from criminals, Rick also wants to win the heart of beautiful girl Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton) and must do battle against the evil Hourglass or Lou Landers (Christopher Mcdonald).
Co-starring Leslie Nielsen, Pamela Anderson, Brent Spiner, Jeffery Tambor, Keith David and Tracy Morgan, this is an outrageous and nicely done parody of superhero movies from "Spider-Man 1 & 2", "Superman", "Batman Begins", "Fantastic Four" and "X-Men". This movie is produced by the great parody maker David Zucker who made "Naked Gun" and this movie works better then the Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer duds as it successfully uses some decent laughs, some nifty spoofs on celebrities like Stephen Hawking, and not too much overdosing on Pop culture references like the Friedberg and Seltzer movies. Sara Paxton is simply gorgeous in this movie as the hero's love interest and Tracy Morgan is hilarious as Professor Xevier, it's worth a look for those that were fed up with Friedberg and Seltzer's trash.
This DVD contains never before seen footage that was cut out of the theatrical release and has some good extras like audio commentary, alternate ending, deleted scenes, and two featurettes with trailer.
Rating: -
Funny Moive Reminiscent of Airplane
After having seen the dreadful Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans (the word "excrement" comes to mind), I was wary of another lousy Airplane wannabe. However, seeing the Zucker name attached to this flick was somewhat encouraging. People who complain about the movie sticking too closely to the Spiderman story apparently never saw Airplane, which stuck very closely to the Airport movies. What differs with spoofs like that 70s classic and this film has to do with the pace of the humor. Whereas Meet the Spartans seemed to stop and point at its jokes and wait for a laugh, Superhero Movie clips along at a brisk pace, mixing in some lightly sick or potty humor along the way. The performances are good, the gags are numerous and well-timed, and the production values are high. Furthermore, the Zucker sensibility is a bit gentler than the Wayans brothers/Scary Movie mindset which usually results in one gross sex joke after another. Of course, bad things do happen to animals and Stephen Hawking along the way--there is a lot of slapstick--so I guess you need to be in the mood for that sort of thing.
Rating: -
Hilarious, except for one thing...
What David Zucker has managed to do in movies such as naked gun, airplane, scary movie etc. is make a funny spoof without going over the edge and making it offensive. But superhero movie failed to do so this time.
I love all of Zucker's movies, and i enjoyed this one, except for the part where they made fun of Stephen Hawking. It's the one person i don't like to see being made fun of. That is why i gave it 3 stars as opposed to 5. Other than that, the film was funny and enjoyable, but one thing they could have done to make it better was if they had not followed the spider man plot so closely. They should have changed it a bit, and maybe it would have been more funny. It also has a good cast as opposed to some of the previous spoof movies.
If you are up-to-date with pop culture and enjoy spoof movies, this one should be good to add to your collection.
Rating: 
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Better than current competetion, but that isn't saying much.
In a decade that has been thriving on the production of spoofs of recent films and re-makes of throwback retro television it is not surprising that the boys that brought you Scary Movie are back at it again with another farce that is low on laughs but heavy on pop-culture references and product placement.
Superhero Movie makes it's way through a storyline that is almost identical to that of Spider-Man(2002) from getting bitten by a bug(this time a engineered dragonfly replaces the spider), to becoming a wall crawling superhero, to falling in love with his dream-girl neighbor, to fighting off an evil scientist(Christopher McDonald) whose superpower is actually somewhat interesting. With these plot elements in place one might believe that the trap is set for a good spoof. But as quickly as the film sets us up for a refreshing superhero sendup, it lets us down with a birrage of fart jokes, myspace references, and poorly used cameos.
On the brightside, Superhero Movie was able to pull a few surprise laughs out of me due to my fascination with making fun of Steven Hawking. Unfortuneatly, the same one-two punch formula of cheap laughs apply here in which the audience will be left laughing at the shear stupidity of the studios for funding the same movie in a different box over and over again, rather than the writing. Superhero Movie may seem decent in comparison to some of it's current competetion, but it is leagues away from a farce of a Mel Brooks standard.
Rating: -
HEROIC SPOOF DOES IT RIGHT
The summer of 2008 will go down in history as the summer of the superhero movie. With the releases (and successes) of IRON MAN, THE INCEDIBLE HULK and DARK KNICHT, superhero movies have taken hold. What began with X-MEN and SPIDERMAN is now a film genre that looks like it has holding power. So what better time than now to do a spoof?
SUPERHERO MOVIE takes on that challenge and does a fantastic job. Thankfully the group behind EPIC MOVIE and MEET THE SPARTANS had nothing to do with this. Those movies were great example of how not to make a spoof. This one is just the opposite. And why not? David Zucker of AIRPLANE and THE NAKED GUN was a producer here and director Craig Mazen helped write the last two SCARY MOVIE films as well as direct a previous superhero comedy THE SPECIALS.
So what's this one about? Young Rick Riker (Drake Bell) is your typical high school nerd. On a field trip to a special lab, he's bitten by an enhanced dragonfly. The next day, he gains powers from the bite like being able to cling to walls, fast reflexes and invulnerability. Okay you get the picture, its Spiderman all over.
This includes his from the sidelines adoration of girl next door Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton), evil millionaire turned super villain Lou Landers (Christopher McDonald) and elderly Aunt and Uncle Lucille and Albert Adams (Marion Ross and Leslie Nielsen). With all of these characters put in play, the fun begins.
How Rick deals with his new powers is less a question than how his friends and family deal with it. Sure the jokes about his hands being stuck to things now with their insect like gripping ability (everything from a drinking fountain to the bust of his teacher) pop up periodically but at least its not an overused joke that never stops. Instead jokes about his powers and family ties twist and turn in various directions.
Along the way Rick meets Prof. Xavier (Tracy Morgan) whose Home For Gifted Students (Non-Asian) is a locale for heroes to learn and train. Try and forget the site of Wolverine using his admantium claws to shave his legs. But their good intentions aren't Rick's way so he heads home to learn to be a hero on his own.
Meanwhile, Lou Landers is dying with a short time left to live. What better time than now to try out the machine he was working on to find cures for all ills and prolong life. The only drawback is that to do so, he must drain the life from someone else daily. The only way to increase this to immortality is to suck the life force from over 47,000 people and that requires a rare element that he steals in the guise of Hourglass, super villain!
Will Rick adapt in time to save the day? Will Hourglass drain everyone on screen? And will Leslie Nielsen ever stop making these kinds of movies? Let's hope not!
The jokes are more sight oriented than spoken so it's difficult to offer an example here without blowing the joke. And from past experience with AIRPLANE, to ruin a visual joke from one of these is a sin. Instead, take the time to rent this one and give it a watch. You'll find yourself laughing from start to finish.
And with this movie coming out prior to the latest summer trend, one can only imagine that a sequel would be in the works. This one jumped the gun, coming out prior to the summer blast. But it fits right in with all of the films hitting screens now.
After writing this initial review, I went back and watched this movie once more. And I can honestly say that it was as funny the second time around as it was the first. It was then that I noticed why and where it did so many things right compared to the recent spoofs mentioned at the beginning of this piece.
First off, while the time period of this movie takes place in the present, it doesn't rely non-stop on current trends (other than superhero movies) or celebrities. One of the worst parts of MEET THE SPARTANS was the repetitious use of the trifecta of slutty celebs (Britney, Lindsay and Paris) to the point where the movie as much about them as it was the movie being spoofed.
Secondly, I noticed the trademark comedy moments that had been missing for years but were first put into place with the Zucker Brothers and Abrahms first films like AIRPLANE or THE NAKED GUN. These were what seemed to be tossed off lines that were out of place but when you saw or rather heard them again the humor or inappropriateness that led to humor was there.
Lastly, the movie seemed to have a genuine love for the subject that it was spoofing. You can tell that these people loved the Spiderman movies. MEET THE SPARTANS and EPIC MOVIE just seemed like people making fun of movies they either didn't get or didn't enjoy. Otherwise why choose to ridicule things that had nothing to do with the subject at hand or insert pop culture references that were always out of place?
Yes, in watching this movie again I laughed out loud several times, waited for upcoming joke that were STILL funny the second time I saw them and in general had a good time. And while there were a few "racy" moments (that is for pre-teens they might be considered such), the film relied in true comedy rather than those moments. And most of those were comments made by Leslie Neilsen who seems to relish them these days. But...it was all in good fun. And good fun is what you get with this movie.
