Super (2011)

Normally it isn’t that difficult to compose a negative review of a terrible, malformed movie like writer-director James Gunn has delivered with Super. Just trash the flick, try to forget about it, and move on, yeah? But it’s tricky this time, because Super is not only a very NON-funny “dark comedy,” but so shocking in its brutality that it makes me question my value judgment regarding film violence.

The movie stars Rainn Wilson, who keeps attempting to establish an acting résumé beyond his socially maladjusted loser character on The Office by playing other socially maladjusted losers on the big screen. Here he takes on the role of Frank, a cook in a greasy-spoon diner, and he’s too clueless to realize that his marriage is crumbling because his wife Sarah (Liv Tyler) loves drugs more than she loves him. When Frank comes home one day to find Sarah’s closet empty, he tracks her down and finds her drugged out and in the company of a snarky drug dealer (Kevin Bacon) who’s apparently successful enough at his criminal enterprise to have a gang of thugs in his employ and a fancy gated mansion to boot.

Despondent and frequently praying to God for a sign of what he should do, Frank sees a cheesy costumed superhero called The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) on a Christian kiddie show, and has a “divine” revelation to make a crappy-looking, crudely sewn red costume and bring his own crime-fighting justice to the streets as The Crimson Bolt. When he visits a comic book shop seeking information on weapon-based superheroes who lack special fantasy powers, Frank ends up befriending a young geek named Libby (Ellen Page), who becomes his too-eager acolyte and sidekick, Boltie.

This all may sound familiar to viewers of last year’s similarly themed movie Kick-Ass, but the Everyman-as-superhero comedy concept is not new; for example, it was 31 years ago that John Ritter played an impromptu caped crime fighter in the comedy Hero at Large. (Heck, I’ve even appeared in a similar film, playing a detective in the half-hour crime-fighter comedy GoodKnight.) The big difference is that, despite the impressive roster of known actors in Super, it is NOT funny, not even from a dark comedy perspective.

I can’t fault the actors for trying (although Kevin Bacon seems miscast and comes off like your kid brother pretending to be a friendly-yet-menacing crime boss), but the laughs just aren’t there. For instance, Ellen Page introduces herself as Libby with a reference to an old advertising jingle from before both her time and most of this film’s likely audience, and it generates zero laughter. All the humor attempted in this film is heavy-handed and awkwardly presented, such as when what could have been a funny verbal reference to nipple rings in The Holy Avenger is undercut by a subsequent shot of the obviously fake jewelry. Whatever comedy exists here is ill-conceived, ill-timed, and reminiscent of bullies and assholes who pull nasty pranks or inflict damage on someone or something and then attempt to justify their behavior by saying, “We were only having fun.”

Super is far more violent than what I expected for a purported dark comedy. I was shocked repeatedly while watching this thing, and the violence increases until, by the climax, it felt no different from viewing the bloody carnage of Scarface. And I try not to be a prude about screen violence; I’m not particularly fond of horrific gore, but fans of that sort of thing know what they’re in for when they watch a Saw movie, for example. And I’ve witnessed a wide variety of dramas and thrillers with shocking, sometimes graphic violence–Blood Simple, A Clockwork Orange, There Will Be Blood, and virtually every movie Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino have ever made–but I accept those scenes because they fit within the proper context of the story each film is telling. Perhaps context is where I draw my nebulous line.

Some films are adept at walking the fine line between shock and laughter that defines the dark comedy genre. A good example is John Waters’ Serial Mom, in which the obsessively fastidious Kathleen Turner murders a woman for not rewinding a videotape. It’s well established by that point in the film that the story and characters are exaggerated and comedic, and the scene, though homicidally violent, is not very explicit, but rather stylized in its presentation (as blood sprays across the TV screen while Turner beats her to death in rhythm to a tune from Annie).

By contrast, an early scene in Super finds Frank waiting in line on the sidewalk by a movie theater when a couple walk up and butt in front of him. After a brief verbal interaction proves ineffective, Frank walks across the street, changes into his Crimson Bolt costume, walks back across the street, and cracks both the man and the woman in the head with a monkey wrench. HARD. They go down bleeding. He yells a brief lecture about butting in line, then drives off as the couple writhe in pain and bleed on the sidewalk while onlookers stand there uselessly. This all happens in broad daylight, with NO comedy or exaggeration whatsoever.

And it gets worse and worse as the film goes on–including two attempted rapes–until by the climax we’re expected to empathize with a character who’s nothing more than a pathetic, violent psychopath, like we’re rooting for John Doe in Se7en. And despite the cartoony opening credits and weak animated inserts like a failed attempt to re-create the comic-book fun of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, there is not enough humor in Super to lighten its load of repulsive violence. Sometimes you gotta draw a line somewhere, and this half-assed, half-titled crap crossed it.