Superhero Movie

We're Not Drenched

For a comedy which has animal humping and humping of dead bodies, being rated PG only means one thing - very certain censorship, and Superhero Movie failed to survive the censor's scissors, having an enormous, and I really mean enormous, chunk of the movie being removed. It was so badly cut, that the narrative doesn't make sense and takes you a while to try and mentally bridge the scenes together. I'm guessing it's a good 5 minutes being cut off, and a quick check at the box office reveals that it is censored due to religious sensitivities.

Seriously, in my opinion, anyone watching this movie would expect that anything goes and no topic too taboo to be made fun of. Pompous people shouldn't be watching this anyway, and would probably steer clear too, given so many other "normal" and safe movies to choose from this week, well, maybe perhaps except for witnessing how Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay. I thought Stephen Hawking had it bad, being spoofed without remorse, and Tom Cruise became a punching bag too. And that's just two of amongst a host of celebrities being made fun of.

Making this comedy poking fun at the genre is a no-brainer. From Scary Movie having a go at the obsession of horror movies and horror remakes, to Epic Movie taking a comedic spin on movies testing buns of steel and Date Movie amping up the Comedic in the Romantic Comedy genre, there are the usual hits and misses, with those like Meet the Spartans sinking real badly. I must admit I was enjoying myself with Superhero Movie, laughing along with every joke that hit the mark, and laughing at those which were just plain lame. There are some moments of brilliance which was unfortunately featured mostly in the trailers, and as usual, those in the trailers didn't survive the final cut.

Drawing material from Batman, X-Men, Fantastic Four and its main storyline, structure and scenes adapting quite wholesale from Spider-Man (2002), it tells of the story of Rick Riker (Drake Bell) who's the Peter Parker clone, along with clones of Aunt May with Aunt Lucille Adams (Marion Ross) and the token Mary Jane Watson love interest with Jill Johnson (Sara Paxton). Leslie Nielsen lent his comedic pedigree as Uncle Albert Adams, while others like Pamela Anderson made unnecessary cameo appearances. The villain is a Green Goblin throwaway, though I thought some effort and creativity had gone into "Hourglass".

Depending on your mood, you might want something really dumb to while your time away after a long day's stress at work so don't approach this with all seriousness. It's unabashedly dumb, and doesn't pass off anything more than that. Stay tuned during the end credits roll as a chock full of deleted scenes and bloopers get played, though cannot compensate for the missing chunk that the censor's scissors took away. If you want to watch it uncut, then you'll probably have to get the DVD, from overseas of course.