BEFORE: I've got another week's worth of superhero movies, but mostly I'm batting clean-up now.
THE PLOT: Set in a world where superheroes are commonly known and accepted, young Will Stronghold, the son of the Commander and Jetstream, tries to find a balance between being a normal teenager and an extraordinary being.
AFTER: Another movie for kids, I guess - or at least the tweener set. Yeah, high-school is tough, and we're supposed to sympathize with the young heroes, but I had to make it through high school without the benefit of super-powers. (Unless you count the ability to make good guesses on standardized tests...)
But there's just something extremely cornball about it all - again, you can't make the ultimate superhero movie AND parody the superhero genre at the same time. You've got to either play it straight or play for laughs, and it's got to be consistent.
First of all, you've got to believe that superheroes exist, next you've got to believe that super-powers are inheritable (in Marvel/DC, some are, some are not...), then you've got to believe that all the superheroes (and some villains) know each other, and send all their offspring to a special high school that's floating in the clouds - I think overall, it's asking a lot.
Because THEN they get into the societal aspects of it all, as it relates to high-school cliques, and the complicated nature of friendships and dating, dealing with parents, etc. There's one scene where Will, the son of two popular heroes, has to admit to his father that his powers haven't kicked in yet - and it's the equivalent of a regular person telling his father that he didn't make the football team, or is flunking math, or any of a number of other real-world situations.
But mostly this is so far off the believability grid, that it becomes very difficult to suspend disbelief. Kids with super-speed, kids with flame-based powers, kids who can melt or change their shape. My other problem is that this has been done SO many times before, in everything from "Teen Titans" to "Young X-Men" to the very recent "Avengers Academy". So for me, it's been there, read that.
Complaint #1 - you can't have all these heroes interacting, with secret identities that everyone seems to know about - then they're not so secret, are they?
Complaint #2 - how come the only music that these kids seem to listen to is emo covers of 80's songs like "I'll Melt With You", "Voices Carry" and "True"? Not that I mind the music, I love cover songs - but it doesn't ring true somehow. Only the cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" makes any kind of thematic sense.
There are a couple of original twists, and an interesting examination of what it means to be a sidekick - sorry, "Hero Support" - and the types of classes one might expect to see at a superhero school (Mad Science 101, Save the Citizen). But it's too easy to imagine the type of scenario where the misfit sidekicks have to band together and step up as heroes against the evil villain - gee, I sure hope they have the right combination of super-powers to save the day...
The one thing that saves the film is the large number of cameos, with two members of the "Kids in the Hall", one from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, and several people known for their roles in various sci-fi and superhero classics.
But with so many young unknown actors and actresses, this film could easily contain someone who could be the next Michael Cera or Megan Fox - and then this would be the film they spend their whole career trying not to be embarrassed by.
Starring: Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Michael Angarano (who?), Kevin Heffernan (Landfill!), Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce Campbell (as the gym teacher), Lynda Carter (as the principal), and Cloris Leachman (as the school nurse). Also Tom Kenny as an average citizen, and Jim Rash (the dean on "Community") as the villain's sidekick, I think.
RATING: 5 out of 10 giant robots
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