Summary
"Superman Returns" is a pretty decent comic book movie. For $200 million it should be. God (or Jor-El) knows director Bryan Singer hasn't succumbed to sardonic tomfoolery, even with Kevin Spacey taking the role of evil genius Lex Luthor. Mr. Singer, who made superhero hay directing the first two "X-Men" pictures, treats the mythos of the original 1938 "Superman" comic book by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (developed in bits and pieces a few years earlier) as seriously as a filmmaker can without the celluloid turning to bronze.
If that sounds like qualified praise, it's because "Superman Returns" has everything going for it except surprise. A little velocity wouldn't have hurt, either. Mr. Singer, who broke through with his twisty crime affair "The Usual Suspects," thinks in terms of individual images and faces rather than images in hurtling, rhythmic sequence. "Superman Returns," a full 2 hours in length, is full of things to look at without those things making the jump into memorable or fully shaped vignettes. The film doesn't quite do for Superman what last summer's "Batman Begins" did for Batman: invest a familiar pop myth with a sense of vivid rediscovery, or what actors call the illusion of the first time.See the full content of this document
Extract
'Superman Returns' Filled with Reverence
It's certainly not short on heart. If Mr. Singer's franchise jump- starter becomes as big a hit as Warner Bros. hopes for, it'll be because of the central romantic triangl...
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