REVIEW: Superman Returns

Not As Big As Expected
Openly gay director Bryan Singer's Superman Returns opened this weekend and I saw it at the Mann Chinese Theater at Hollywood & Highland with a friend. The movie stars the excessively pulchritudinous Brandon Routh in the title role, the ambiguously heterosexual Kevin Spacey as Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor and Kate Bosworth as Superman's main squeeze Lois Lane.

Sadly, the director seems to have shot the movie without a coherent script. Happily, this didn't really spoil my enjoyment of the movie. Singer apparently channels his intense lust for Routh into making the object of his desire breathtakingly beautiful in every shot. The special effects and production values are absolutely top knotch, and the supporting players (X-Men: The Last Stand's Cyclops James Marsden, Parker Posey, Kal Penn) are excellent, except for the doofus playing Jimmy Olson.

After the blogosphere-hyped stories about movie executives' worries about Superman's bulge being digitally altered by Warner Bros. I am happy/sad to report that they were "much ado about nothing." As you can see from the publicity still attached to this post, there are lots of things about Superman Returns which are not as big as expected.

REVIEW: B