A few months ago I caught the trailer for this film online, Rainn Wilson running around with a pipe wrench hitting people in the head, sold. Ellen Page in a tight fitting spandex superhero costume? Well, kinda sold I guess, maybe. The story seemed like a retread of the whole Kick-Ass plot, but on a lower budget with an indie Juno-esque spin to it, oh, and Kevin Bacon’s in it too. Is he still married to Kyra Sedgwick? Is she like 70 now? She has a TV show on TNT, it’s called, The Closer, like someone who closes a door, but I like to call it The Closer, as if it was getting nearer to me. It always makes me think it’s about a character from Glengarry Glen Ross, but it’s TNT and Kyra Sedgwick so I doubt it has anything to do with that. Singles was a good flick though, she was in that, although the only things that really stick in my mind about it are that Paul Westerberg song, Pearl Jam were in it, and so was Bridget Fonda. Matt Dillon was in it too, I used to run into him at all these weird places downtown in NYC, I’d see him drinking at Milano’s down on Houston… or I saw him another time at Bungalo 8, he was wearing one of those leather jackets with an 8 ball on the back of it… another time he was in the east village at some bar with two really unattractive chicks… weird.
Bridget Fonda though, whatever happened to her? I just looked it up, she married Danny Elfman, the dude who scores all the Tim Burton flicks… he is officially the luckiest guy in the world, because Bridget Fonda is awesome and in some alternate reality I would have written all the best Oingo Boingo songs and stolen her heart. I just realized there is not a single Oingo Boingo song I can even come up with, were they really that awesome? Is this a huge gaping hole in my musical library? This is something that needs to be addressed at some point, because Danny Elfman has stolen Bridget Fonda away from the rest of the world and it better be justfied. I don’t want to find out that Bridget Fonda just has really shitty taste.
In much the same way that Danny Elfman has stolen Bridget Fonda away from us, in Super, Kevin Bacon’s character steals Liv Tyler away from Rainn Wilson, which makes it necessary for Rainn to become a superhero as this is the natural progression of most break-ups. You may have noticed I didn’t mention Liv Tyler until now, that’s because you were already thinking that this movie might have some merit, but now your excitement just went up like 23%, it’s an old blues trick.
For the sake of argument, let’s just call Rainn Wilson’s character Dwight, because that’s basically who he’s playing, Dwight Schrute from The Office dressed up as a superhero. Not to say that it isn’t cool to watch Dwight Schrute dressed up as a superhero hitting people with a pipe wrench, but there is some regret that this isn’t actually an episode of The Office. I just read an interview where Rainn Wilson tries to explain that he told the director to stop him if he ever brought any of the Dwight Schrute character into the film, you know, because he’s an actor. The director must have just rolled his eyes and given up. The director by the way is James Gunn who makes some pretty fabulous fucked up films, check out this video of the Humanzee that he did and you can’t help but like him, his PG porn is pretty alright too.
Dwight becomes a superhero with a little help from God, I forgot to mention that, apparently God is pretty awesome, rips fucking skulls literally and guides people on their way. Haha, he probably never does that shit in real life but this isn’t a documentary, and it gives the film a reason to shoehorn in the eminently cool Nathan Fillion as the Holy Avenger.
Ellen Page plays a comic book store employee who helps further facilitate Dwight’s transformation into his superhero persona, the Crimson Bolt. And bonus, she decides he needs a sidekick and becomes Boltie, which is just an excuse to shoehorn Page into a tight fitting spandex outfit. I never really thought much about Ellen Page, but the outfit really does something for her, and you know what, it might actually be Lycra… what’s the difference between Lycra and Spandex, that is something that also needs to be explained, there’s already way too many words in the English language.
The movie is very violent, lots of shooting, beatings, blood, explosions, and other stuff like that. There is some nudity, sex, rape and lots of cursing, but it’s not a coming of age story by any means, no matter what your were thinking. It’s a straight up revenge/rescue/redemption flick with a few unexpected plot twists, so when you saw Super, said it with a lisp in your head and then somehow got it confused with the movie Precious, you were way off the mark. It’s fairly well done and entertaining for the most part, I would say it’s worth a rental, and since it was in and out of theaters in a week, that’s what you’re going to settle for nonetheless. Unless you decide to buy the special Blu-Ray edition which is like $100 probably.
