Well… I didn’t hate it.
The first half-hour, forty-five minutes has some nice touches. As in many of his big-budget extravagaction films, Bryan Singer displays a real fondness and talent for the character-driven, carefully-staged, small-scale suspenseful witty moments… even as such films invariably stomp all over such smaller pleasures, looking to supersede the sequence with CGItis.
What works: a lot of small character details and witty side-ways moments (again, mostly in that first third of the film). One particularly good sequence involving a henchman, a defiant Lois Lane, and her sickly little boy, the boy and h-man playing “Body and Soul” on the piano together. (It’s a really great bit.) Spacey, occasionally. Posey, less occasionally.
What doesn’t work: the action pretty much crashes to a halt–falls sobbing into the corner–as the love plot, or rather lovelorn plot, takes center stage. The action sequences confine themselves to rather dull-looking soundstages and even more dully-imagined confrontations. But these sequences are pretty damn limited; I think the film creeps on for half an hour after the “big” climactic confrontation. Now, some will say I’m being a 13-year-0ld boy, unwilling to engage with the romance or the “deep” character stuff. But that plot, while much more drawn out, is still two-dimensional, and unengaging. The film is finest when lightest on its feet, and the minute Supes and Lois start trading forlorn glances the film wrenches your neck trying to swing your emotional engagement. Bleah. It transforms from Fred Astaire into Fred Munster, clomping around in a crying jag.
Again, I didn’t hate it. It’ll probably satisfy, since most everything Summery seems to suck. But saying it doesn’t suck is grim praise this late in the “big” season.
Ugh.
I didn’t hate it but I think I liked it a bit more than you. The problem for me is that I liked the lovelorn unrequited love stuff. I found Lex Luthor and his nefarious schemes to be the boring bits. There are two films here: the summer blockbuster and the compelling love triangle bound by a supersecret most will figure out within the first twenty minutes or so. I know one can’t reduce Superman to domestic drama, but that was the stuff I enjoyed most. Richard Donner’s film haunts this one a bit too much for all concerned, but there are some lovely and lyrical visual sequences that are worth seeing. For what its worth, I prefered this over Batman Begins and the second Spiderman.
i liked it. until simon explained to me that it was boring, i liked it a lot. since i’m incredibly suggestible to anything simon sez, now i like it a little bit less, though i don’t know why (he’s the laconic type). actually, i enjoyed watching it a lot. it was a bit clunky, but the special effects were great and really sucked me in. and i’m a big sucker for airplane scenes, being a most phobic airplane traveller, so the scene at the beginning and the later airplane scene worked for me 100%. i am just getting into cartoons, which i had sworn eternal hatred to, thanks to jeff’s praise on textualities of two graphic novels, and my subsequent great enjoyment of them. so now i’m all tuned in to cartoonish elements in films that are derived from cartoons (is this making any sense?) and i was pleased to realize that, even though superman is way more cartoonish than spiderman one and two, i still liked it. does superman has to be so wooden, though? is this required by the franchise or is it bad acting on the actor’s part? i’m tempted to say the latter, because lois is wooden too, as is richard. i will have, however, to disagree with reynolds, something i am always, always wary of doing, and say that parker posey had puuurfect comic timing, given the shitty part she was given to play.
things i liked in this film:
airplane scenes
multiplying rocks
little boy
richard’s generosity in letting lois go to the hospital (that was a great touch)
supes’ menschliness in letting richard finish the boat rescue (nice touch, too)
piano-playing scene
amazing gender balance (phew!)
scene of the metropolis’ buildings shaking up and coming to pieces, as it was interestingly reminiscent of 9/11
since i never like the villains, there’s nothing i have to say in favor of kevin spacey, though i suspect he was good. he had some good lines, in any case.
PS the thing about being suggestible (is this even an english word?) to simon’s pronouncements was a joke, though you’d be surprised what being with someone for so long can do to you. beware, oh you young’uns!