Where to start on Superman Returns? It's terribly cast, poorly conceived, extremely light on action, features a romance that is not remotely romantic, doesn't feature a single memorable, "gosh, that was great" repeat-to-your-friends moment in a positive way (the blunder bits start early and often), will be crushed by Pirates of The Caribbean II and played out completely before August 1.

Aside from that…

The thing is, it is not rip-your-eyes-out-of-their-sockets bad. It is S.O.B. for the summer of 2006. (If you don't know what that means, read up on your Blake Edwards.) On the Shitty Summer Movie Scale, I would rate the major films that I have seen (leaving out any negative I might feel towards Cars or Over The Hedge) so far:

1. Poseidon
2. The Da Vinci Code
3. Mission: Impossible II
4. The Break-Up
5. Superman Returns
6. X-Men 3

As you probably realize, three of those six are over $100 million domestic, two of those three should pass $200 million domestic and Superman Returns is likely to join the $100 million group before July 2 or 3. This movie is going to open and open big.

That said, opening is never about the movie. And in this case, it will be interesting to see whether what I am calling "The Anne Thompson Rule" is in effect. What that means is that Anne often shoots from the organ just below the hip when it comes to movies that may have a strong female appeal and, truth be told, I am always looking over one shoulder when she gets on that tear. I am not a girl. My teenage niece doesn't tell me nearly as much as Anne's teen daughter - who is probably too sophisticated and smart to be a perfect guide to predicting box office.

But I do get teen boys, in spite of underestimating their interest in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a couple of years ago. And teenage boys are not going to be clamoring for a whole lot of repeat viewings of Superman Returns.

Here's the deal. When Bryan Singer was faced with creating a Superman movie while the sets were being built in Australia, it appears that he and his writers, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, looked at the first Superman film and to start mining it for ideas and gags, like an animated short team might… "How about if there is an explosion under Metropolis and the fire shoots up into the street and Superman's super breath puts it out and then blows up in the street?" Great! "People falling out of the windows like people out of the World Trade Center on 9/11." Check! "And let's explain how Superman got to earth, because not every kid saw it, but let's not really explain because others did." Okay!

There are no less than 20 direct visual, story, or direct dialogue quotations from the original two films here. But there are some huge blockades to this working. Kate Bosworth is 23 years old. Baby Routh is 26. So by building the story around, in part, a 5-year-old child, the movie is telling us that a 21-year-old Superman had sex with a barely 18-year-old Lois Lane in Superman II. They also are telling us that a 23-year-old got a Pulitzer Prize and it doesn't really go to her head… because unlike Margot Kidder's Lois Lane, Kate's Lois is niiiiiiice. And while looking back at Superman identifying Lois' panties as pink may seem old fashioned and sweet, there is not a moment of even that level of good spirited sexiness in this movie.

Thing is, I would have welcomed a movie that reset the Superman story with younger players. Why not? The casting of Kate Bosworth is looking as faulty as the casting of Emmy Rossum and Jacinda Barrett in Poseidon. In fact, aside from Frank Langella, who gets nothing to do anyway, there is barely a single good casting decision. Routh might be okay, but we'll never know until he stars in something else, because he was clearly doing a word-for-word, smirk-by-smirk imitation of Chris Reeve here. (He gets in one speech at the very end that sounds like he might be speaking in his own personal voice.)

But all that said, a young cast would have been cool. What kind of woman gets a Pulitzer at 23 and how does it affect her? How much has she given up relationshi-wise for the sake of her son that she had at such a young age? How much female attention would even a geeky guy who looks like Brandon Routh get in Metropolis? Etc, etc, etc. If you want to make a movie about younger people, you have to make it about younger people.

Still, all these problems might have been overcome by a few great action set pieces or a really interesting twist or a villain who was a real genius and/or interested in more than being a bully or a romance that could bloom and not be held back by a competing relationship that is ill defined and endlessly uninteresting or really, anything that made this movie stand out as special - other than a lot of money spent on effects and advertising glamour level cinematography.

It's not a hideous piece of crap. It really is about a step behind X-Men: The Last Stand, equally poorly directed, equally missing complexity, equally not up to the standards of the first two films, but with less interesting characters and absolutely zero sense of humor about itself.

There is a list of flaws and a couple of things in the film that actually offended me that I could mention... but I will restrain myself until we can take this discussion to The Hot Blog after more readers see the film.

I expect that people will say they like the movie, critics will generally be kind to the movie, and that audiences will find themselves talking about Little Man instead of Super Man by the middle of July.

I dunno if I'm just used to the more dark and mellow Lex from Smallville, but... yeah.

Well heres the first truly negative response, I mean it's bad. David Poland hated it.

Dead Man's Chest http://www.myspace.com/deadmanschest 70126 friends

Well heres the first truly negative response, I mean it's bad. David Poland hated it.

http://www.moviecitynews.com/columnists ... 60615.html

With the quoting the whole post and everything, brilliant. Now you just need to change the name and avatar..... or just put a big BKB head on the girl.

oh, and this time i would expect w.b. lawyers to be called.

abrams script kicked. Civil war with styar wars esque battle rage on krypton amd as a result the planet will explode.
so their king jor-el sends his son kal-el. krypton explodes but jorels evil twin brother katazor sends his son ty zor to find superman. clark is raised in smallville-scenes are pure gold-moves to metropoilis. save air force one from a crash. lex luthor is an alien hunting cia agent(like the x files) n knows superman is an alien and checks him out. mega battle with superman vs. mega huge alien robot in washington d.c. is amazing. mega balttle between superman and tyzor world wide is spectacular. superman dies for lois lane. sad funneral while tyzor n men tak eover world., jorel kills himself n gives his soul rebirth to superman. complete with kung fu knowledge. superman is reborn, digs out of his casket, unites the world leaders n they strike. its like 1000 jets with kryptonite laoded missiles n superman aginst 3 huge all powerful aliens. the alies win, and tyzor is killed. but uh-oh! lkthors an alien! dun dun dun duh!!!

that has to be the single most horrible thing I've ever read. Uwe Boll anyone?

that has to be the single most horrible thing I've ever read. Uwe Boll anyone?

Exactly I dont know how he can even defend JJ Abrams script. He wanted to get rid of the cape too and remember all those rumors of Kerri Russell being cast as Lois Lane, it was JJ's idea too. He wanted the Superman movie to span to Kent Clarks college day with Lois Lane making an appearance and punching out one of the frat boys. If people think Singer's version is bad, wait till they see how bad Abrams is

Uwe: At the end Superman must fight Krypton zombies who have liquid kyptonite for blood. Superman fights them all at a rave party to awesome techno music. He punches one of their heads off and looses his powers because he get drenched in evil zombie blood. Then he gets bit and turns into a zombie. Jimmy Olsen comes in and takes pictures and Superman begs him to kill him. Jimmy chops his head off with chainsaw and gains Superman's powers and sequel will have Bow Wow as Jimmy Olsen as new Superman vs. whole planet of evil krypton zombies.

oooh oooh ooh. Roid. can you do your uwe boll impersonation and make the above post Bollified?

I gotta admit this looks very true. The movie will definitely be 150 minutes long BUT have very very few action scenes that will bore the crap out of teenagers.
I can see this movie opening huge and then dropping HARD on second weekend unless all superman fans foolishly keep supporting the movie.