'Superman Returns' carries on the legend

'Superman Returns' carries on the legend with few new twists

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Part elegy to its own storied past and part pop-cultural fairy tale, a high-flying Superman Returns almost makes you overlook a shaky start, not to mention a dose of reverence so inflated it could fill a cathedral.

Abandoning the X-Men series, director Bryan Singer doesn't so much have a story to tell as a franchise to revive, and he does it by tweaking the familiar. In the movie's boldest bit of updating, Lois Lane is given a 5-year-old son.

The intrepid Daily Planet reporter's efforts have not gone unrewarded - Lane won a Pulitzer Prize for an article entitled Why the World Doesn't Need Superman.

Singer evidently wants us to ponder our need for saviors. Lois' article was inspired by Superman's absence: During a five-year sabbatical, the Man of Steel traveled to the planet Krypton, a futile journey to find his roots.

Upon his return, Superman goes through a heap of emotional jet lag: He must adjust to Lois' new status as a mom with a live-in boyfriend and to his role as a perpetual outsider at the human party.

The cast has changed since Superman last flew across screens in 1987, the fourth edition of a series that started in 1978. Brandon Routh replaces the late Christopher Reeve, the best of all the many big-screen Supermen. Routh clearly studied Reeve's style, which either will strike you as smart or as a reminder of how much better Reeve was.

The rest of the cast proves a mixed blessing. Showing far too little ace-reporter snap, Kate Bosworth takes over for Margot Kidder as the irrepressible Lane and Kevin Spacey picks up where Gene Hackman left off as the fiendish Lex Luthor.

Enamored of his own foul nature, Spacey's Luthor comes closest to capturing a comic-book spirit; but Luthor anchors a lame-brained plot about attempts to create a new continent, a plan that will result in the death of millions of innocents. Parker Posey portrays Kitty, the hard-hearted moll who just might melt under Superman's gaze.

Because the movie takes place in the present, I wondered why the writers (Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris) couldn't have come up with a few more interesting wrinkles: Superman blowing a tsunami back into the sea, for example.

That's not to say that the movie shortchanges action. A set piece involving a plummeting space shuttle creates white-knuckle tension, and a bit in which a bullet bounces harmlessly off Superman's steely eyeball finds just the right mixture of anxiety and humor.

Perhaps an obsessive fondness for comic-book heroes encouraged Singer to dole out quasi-religious talk about a father who sends his only son to Earth to help the planet's foundering residents. Singer underscores such lofty aims by using Marlon Brando's voice from the first Richard Donner-directed movie: Brando, you'll recall, played Superman's dad Jor-El.

In the early going, Singer brings the Man of Steel back to his boyhood home for a reunion with his widowed mother (Eva Marie Saint). Superman remembers his youth while the music trumpets John Williams' bravura theme, nicely embellished by composer John Ottman.

These opening salvos alternate between Superman's story and Luthor's fiendish return, hunks of narrative that generate little momentum. And there are moments in this 2 1/2-hour saga when hushed reverence tips toward dullness. But surprisingly tender interludes punctuate the action. Singer's at his best when he concocts a sequence in which Superman gently hoists Lois into the stratosphere for an Olympian view of the suffering world.

It might have been better had Routh displayed more of Superman's confidence to go with Clark Kent's timidity. His Superman becomes a near-helpless bystander in Lois' life. She's engaged to a colleague at the newspaper (James Marsden), who's spunkier than the Man of Steel. And she's obviously devoted to her asthmatic son, who spends so much time at The Daily Planet you wonder whether Lois has heard of day care.

Reverence can be a trap as well as a blessing, blanching some of the fun out of the Superman experience. Weakened by kryptonite, Superman is so mercilessly brutalized by Luthor that I half wondered whether Singer wasn't trying for "The Passion of the Superman" transcendence. And when a wounded Superman falls through space, his arms are outstretched in crucifixion mode.

Superman Returns has a lot tugging on its cape - from Routh's inexperience to the script's wanton disregard for logic. And when the tone waxes nostalgic, it can feel as if we're watching a memory, not a movie.

But Singer's first flight into Superman territory generates enough thrills to ensure a return engagement. And next time, the director may feel less compelled to reassert his famous superhero's importance.

We need Superman. We get it. He may have been gone, but the guy wasn't forgotten.

Superman Returns

The Man of Steel is back

• Grade: B

• Rating: PG-13

• Running time: 154 minutes