Trailer:
“It’s okay Supergirl, we never saw you—in fact we never even heard of you”
(No truer words have ever been spoken about this film.)
Supergirl was always one of the most forgettable Superhero films, existing completely in the shadow of the four Superman films. It makes its first critical mistake early on when it attempts to copy the classic opening of the Superman credit sequence, complete with a subpar score. After that you can’t help but compare it to the Richard Donner films, seeing as they practically challenged the viewers to it.
The film was plagued by so many different issues that it impossible to put them all into one lone review. Highest up though is the fact that the movie just makes no sense and takes no time trying to. It makes it perfectly clear that it wants to fit itself into the Superman movie universe but gives none of the details necessary to do that.
The film opens with Kara Zor-El living on a weird city called Argoth. Instantly it creates the questions of where is this city? Who are the inhabitants? Kryponians? How did they survive? How does Kara know her cousin is alive on earth? How did she survive? None of these are ever answered so don’t hold your breath. I’m not very familiar with the Supergirl back-story so I’m not sure how they compare to the comics or if it even does a better job of explaining.
Anyways Kara is hanging out with her mentor Zaltar who seems like an artist that stole the cities power source to make what looks like Styrofoam models. The two yahoos, fooling around with the ships irreplaceable energy source end up losing it into space. Here is your hero ladies and gentlemen. Feeling responsible Kara jumps in a spaceship to chase it down while Zaltar volunteers to take his DNA out of the gene pool by sending himself to the Phantom Zone. Darwin would be proud.
The entire film is built on conveniences. The lost magic ball literally lands in the lap of one of the world’s most powerful witches just as she is discussing how she might take over the world. Superman just happens to be gone in another galaxy for that time. Kara happens to hide at the same school as Lois Lanes little sister, where the witches accomplice just happens to be working. The list goes on but I’m just sparing you from spoilers (as absurd as that sounds coming from this predictable film).
The villain Selena is so cliché and hammy that she becomes more of a joke than anything else. Especially with lines like “I will accept nothing less than…world domination” except unlike the 1966 batman film, she says it with a straight face. It is hard to feel any sort of a threat from someone when every other character in the film declares her to be an amateur. She also makes no sense as she claims that with her magic ball the world will be “her oyster” when all she can do with it at the time is start a car.
As for her grand scheme, she claims at the beginning that she will “dominate the world” yet for the entire film, all she is trying to do is make out with a hot stud who quotes fake Shakespearian lines. How this accomplishes her goal of ruling the world is beyond me. Sound like she is just looking to get some action.
Helen Slater plays Kara/Linda/Supergirl. She is dry, boring, charisma free, and unrelatable. She might as well have been a Kryptonian robot rather than Clark’s cousin. She also seems to have just made up powers that pop up, such as shape shifting cloths. She also doesn’t have a solid characterization at all, going from timid one second and a wanna-be badass the next.
Don’t even get me started on the love interest Ethan. The film is supposed to be about Supergirl reclaiming the all powerful orb but the majority of the film she is trying to keep Selena the witch from snatching her personality deficient boyfriend. Because Ethan was under a spell when he fell in love with Kara there is zero reason to root for their relationship, if you think about it, is all a lie. For a while I was convinced he was a male prostitute they were all fighting over. I don’t know who he is and couldn’t care less about him.
So what good can I say about this film? Not much. The effects weren’t horrible for the time and most of the flying scenes were better done here than in any of the Superman films, including the latest one. That might have just been due to the more elegant flexibility of the female stunt doubles. Also what little was seen of Jimmy Olsen’s character was welcome. Peter O'Toole also gives a pretty strong performance as Zaltar, given the horrible material he had to work with.
In the end though Supergirl is a convoluted mess that has far too long of a running time, making it even more painful. I’d go so far to say it ran about 2 hours and four minutes too long. The soundtrack tries to duplicate John Williams epic feel but becomes loud, obnoxious and sporadic. The greatest sin it commits though is that with such a long running time it is BORING!
FINAL RATING: 1/10 (10%)
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