Mailbag Round-Up: Superhero Movie: Extended Edition

Jun 29, 2008- Permalink

Sometimes you dip your hand into the mailbag and it bites back…

We received a copy of Superhero Movie, a spoof flick “from the guys who brought you Scary Movie and The Naked Gun.” If you ever feel the need to completely waste about 90 minutes of your life, then this is the movie to do it.

Writer-director Craig Mazin has basically taken the plot of a superhero film — in this case Spider-Man — and shifted some things aside to make room for a healthy dose of sight gags, physical shtick, and, most importantly, fart jokes.

Now gags, shtick and farts can be funny if delivered effectively and in the right doses, but Mazin has gone way overboard with material that’s not funny or just sits there like a rock. It doesn’t help that the hero, played by Drake Bell, has all the charisma and comic ability of a bug squashed against your windshield. His Dragonfly just has to get out of the way of much better comic actors like Leslie Nielsen, Christopher McDonald and Marion Ross, but even they can’t sink their teeth into this meatless parody. Poor Ross is also the supplier (but surprisingly not the denier) of one of the longest fart jokes in the history of film. Poor woman, did she not save any of her Happy Days money?

The film is full of cameos like Pamela Anderson, Craig Bierko and Robert Hays, but they too are wasted. The best bit in the whole film belongs to Miles Fisher, whose dead on parody of Tom Cruise in the Scientology tapes is excellent. I’d almost say it would be worth the price of admission, but since it was placed on the Internet, put your wallet back.

This film is packed with the usual extras: commentary, alternate ending, deleted scenes and a “The Art of Spoofing” minidoc. It seems a bit weird to call them extras since that implies that they’re being added on to something and there’s nothing here.