Back again: David Corenswet as Superman in ‘Superman’.
SUPERMAN **1/2 (129 minutes) M
Great dog movie.
That neatly sums up what’s best about the new Superman, the latest super-expensive attempt to reboot the original superhero into a film franchise.
Some ancient journos might fondly remember the old Superman cartoon series The New Adventures of Superman (1966-70), a top after-school treat that included a segment about Superboy and his loyal dog Krypto, who also flew around with a snazzy cape.
Wisely, the makers of Superman (written and directed by James Gunn) have kept the cape and made Krypto the funniest, cheekiest thing in the film. Slightly unruly but faithful as all good mutts are, the super-powered pooch is a crowd-pleasing presence in an otherwise ho-hum adventure.
It’s not bad by any means, yet the comic frisson of its wonderful opening reel quickly dampens as the so-so adventure unspools.
And that’s where we yet again find ourselves, folks, in this 21C era of post-content cinema – sitting before another loud $200+ million VFX spattered epic the chief response to which is a resounding “meh”.
If anything, the chief achievement of the new Superman movie is that it reminds us just how great the old Superman movie from 1978 was, and still is – pre-digital effects and all. So many remakes of the past 20 years have done the same thing, driving people to revisit the magic of the original.
Broadly, the frame of the story sees peace-loving Superman (David Corenswet) tussling with arch enemy Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), a corporate thug who is orchestrating war between two nations, similar in nature to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
During the day Supe is a reporter Clark Kent at The Daily Planet and dating colleague Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) who, regrettably, knows he’s Superman.
Drats. Precisely why Gunn decided to do this is baffling as it deflates one of the key appeals of the Superman story. (How great was Margot Kidder is bringing such life to this?)
Set present-day, the film makes much of social media as Superman suffers from an image problem, but it turns out to be fairly tepid, along with most of the shenanigans. The best thing about it is Sara Sampaio’s OTT turn as Eve Teschmacher, the selfie-obsessed villain’s moll – though, again, she couldn’t shine Valerie Perrine’s pumps.
So, it’s all a bit whoopdeedo.
Apart from Krypto, of course.
Raffish, lovable, and brilliantly rendered, he’s more than a mere canine sidekick; he’s pivotal to the plot, a lynchpin to the action. They should team him up with Brandy from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and make a movie about them.
Superman has the Fortress of Solitude (staffed with wise-cracking robot servants), a B-team of super-powered dolts called the Justice Gang, a wormhole portal that briefly crosses through an extra-dimensional multiverse-type realm (aren’t we sick to death of these things by now?) and some totally unconvincing guff about whether Superman’s parents wanted him to help humanity or lord over it.
It’s all very cluttered and dispatched in a very pedestrian manner. One senses the film wants dearly to be funnier than it is, that Gunn was aiming for something as witty and zesty as his Guardians of the Galaxy larks.
On top of that we’ve got a scatty central performance from David Corenswet who, while he’s nowhere near the best Superman we’ve seen, might well be the puffiest. No disrespect intended, but isn’t Superman, the Man of Steel, who can fly and lift buildings and battle giant creatures, meant to be a bit, well, buff? Even George Reeves from the old 1950s Superman TV series sucked in his stomach while posing fists-on-hips before the American flag.
As for Nicholas Hoult, only two words come to mind while watching his bland, high-volume work as Lex Luthor – Gene Hackman. Again, what we see here merely accentuates the brilliance of what came before.
Even the music riffs on the original John Williams score. If you’re going to go to all this trouble and expense, why not come up with summat new?
The presumed stab at political commentary with the allegory of the warring nations is sloppy, confusing and already dated, for if we are supposed to be reading something deep and meaningful and incisive, precisely who is meant to be representing who? Is Luthor Putin? Or Musk? Or Trump? Or is Superman Trump?
Still, we have Krypto. A noble member of the pantheon of great Movie Dogs, Krypto embodies the best qualities of your stalwart cinematic canine, only with a cape.
The mutt saves the movie – if only just.
SMURFS ***1/2 (92 minutes) G
Oh, the Smurfs. Again with the Smurfs. Haven’t we had enough of the Smurfs, the diminutive cousins of the Na’vi from Avatar?
We had the comics, the cute hard-plastic figurines – extra cute when you step on the suckers in bare feet – the cartoons, then the movies, the last three taking about a billion at the box office.
And now we have another film – Smurfs. Just Smurfs. They’ve dropped the definite article presumably to save time and to signify how Smurfdom has now reached such a level of global recognition and adoration that any embellishment on the name is now redundant.
It’s like when famous people become known by just one name – Garbo; Elvis; Madge; Adele; Liberace. Same thing.
And never forget to always cap Smurfs, else you’ll get a letter from the legal team in Belgium, the country what gave us chocolate, waffles and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
So, are we Smurfed out?
Well, no.
Even those who feel like they’ve had Smurfs up to their bottom lip will find delight aplenty with this snappy go at rebooting the film franchise. (2025 is turning out to be The Year of the Reboot with Jurassic Park, Superman, Karate Kid, Train Your Dragon, Harry Potter, I Know What You Did, etc)
Harping on the central Smurf theme of how everyone is defined by the thing they do best, the busier-than-busy story follows No Name Smurf (voiced by James Corden) who is eager for said definition.
Magic turns out to be his thing, though this promptly leads to a rift in the space-time continuum (note to filmmakers: enough with this device, please) and a Pandora’s Box of trouble and a container-load of characters.
Thankfully it’s all done with wit and lots of colourful action, the highlight being a chase scene that takes the participants through different animation formats.
The voice cast includes such notables as: Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson from Parks & Recreation); John Goodman (Papa Smurf); Kurt Russell; Octavia Spencer; Sandra Oh; and Rihanna – a producer on the film and who also goes by one name – who voices Smurfette.
This raises a question: Loveable, brisk and enjoyably frantic as the film is, Smurfette appears to be the only female in Smurf Village. She’s certainly the only one wearing a dress and heels. All the other characters are male.
Guessing from some of the voices, one or two girls pop up briefly in other contexts, but there seems to be a pretty chronic gender imbalance issue here indicating a patriarchal societal structure and dire lack of managerial policies regarding quotas.
Where is the online outcry against the blatantly oppressive male-dominated agenda promoted by this film? Or will an upcoming Smurf movie reveal an alternate Smurf Village where the gender imbalance is reversed? Will we see Valley of the Amazon Smurfettes? Attack of the 50 Foot Smurfette? (Who wouldn’t pay to see that?)
But hang on. Wasn’t there a hidden community of femme-Smurfs in 2017’s Smurfs: The Lost Village? If so, it still doesn’t invalidate the gender-bias argument because that was a long time ago. Where are all the Smurfettes now? Damn tokenism. You bastards.
All that aside, Smurfs is perfectly timed for mass consumption on the school holidays, ending on the up-note that a sequel is to come if this turns a dollar.