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Does the world need a savior?  Everyone, including Lois Lane, played by Kate Bosworth (Blue Crush), seems to have been getting along just fine with Superman gone for the past five years.  Or so they convince themselves.  But the man of steel, played by Brandon Routh (who?), returns in the nick of time to foil a new plot devised by old nemesis Lex Luthor, played by the strikingly Hackman-like Kevin Spacey (The Usual Suspects, Pay It Forward), who recently made parole, Luthor, that is.

The plot is rehashed and loose ends are left dangling at several points.  But like a Dickens’ novel, the character development is fantastic.  Lois has moved on and has a son.  Superman has to juggle his old feelings for Lois with keeping his secret identity, not breaking up Lois’ “family,” and of course his greater mission on behalf of mankind.  The storyline advances these issues, strengthens the character of just about everyone involved, and, most Tollbooth readers will be delighted to know, contains more Christian allegories than any original screenplay since The Matrix.

We’ve always known that Superman was not of this world, sent by his father to save humanity.  But this film takes that and runs with it, emphasizing that he gets his power from the sun, the unity of the father and the son, and just a few more that we’ll save for the theater.

The one big negative in this film is that, along with a child. Lois has a live-in boyfriend who has never bothered to marry her.  So be prepared to explain that one to your kids if you bring any along.  Aside from that, thumbs up, up, and away!  
 

By Dan Singleton
June 28, 2006 

It’s been nineteen years since the last “Superman” movie was made. Christopher Reeve has passed away and the search began for a new actor in the lead role. Enter Brandon Routh, who is from Des Moines, IA. and was on the soap opera, “One Life To Live.” Routh certainly looks the part of the muscular flying hero, but the delivery of his lines leaves something to be desired. Kate Bosworth (“Remember The Titans.”) plays Lois Lane like a high school girl playing reporter. The same with Kevin Spacey’s Lex Luthor, but in his case, there were few line deliveries and lots of time spent staring at the camera. Where are Margot Kidder and Gene Hackman when you need them?

The story has Superman absent for five years while he visits his own planet. In the meantime, Lois has a boyfriend (James Marsden from “The X-Men”), has a child (Tristan Leabu), and Lex Luthor is out of prison because Superman wasn’t there to testify against him. Lex figures out a way to dispose of Superman and create a new land addition to the United States at the same time. Before you can say, “We used to do that in science class,” Lex is wrecking havoc, Lois is pouting and Superman appears clueless.

Every 20 minutes or so, the film kept reminding me of other films, including a “Star Trek” movie about creating a new planet, Heathcliff wandering about in  “Wuthering Heights” and any romance in which two people avoid each other. It took three scriptwriters to do this.

I saw the film at an IMAX theater in 3-D and the special effects were quite good including the beginning shot of “something” falling to earth, space shuttle malfunction and Superman and Lois floating past the Daily Planet. Brandon Routh looks like a young Christopher Reeve, but at times the cape on his costume looked like cardboard. Bosworth seems too young to be a prize-winning investigative reporter, much the same as Julia Stiles seems to be too young to be the mother of the devil in “The Omen.”  Kevin Spacey didn’t appear to be having fun in “Superman Returns.” That’s unfortunate, because a good villain is hard to find and Spacey has played good villains (remember “Seven?”) There is a lackadaisical way he tosses off his lines that makes you wish for the giggle of Gene Hackman. James Marsden, on the other hand, plus young Tristan Leabu as Lois’s son, makes you believe in their characters. Eva Marie Saint is touching as Superman’s earth mother and Frank Langella, though not with the caustic wit of Spiderman’s editor, is adequate.

John Williams’s famous “Superman” theme begins the movie and you hear it throughout at special times. Composer John Ottman then has the unenviable task of bridging his music with that of Williams. He does accomplish this and I was satisfied.

Yes, “Superman” does return and just like 28 years ago when the audience was breaking in Christopher Reeve, we begin again with Brandon Routh. Let’s hope the man of steel has staying power.

Copyright 2006 Marie Asner
Filmer456@aol.com
Submitted 6/28/06

The super man returneth. It's been almost 30 years since something "more powerful than a locomotive" (Christopher Reeve as Superman and Margot Kidder as Lois Lane) made a  summer action flick based on a comic book hero into the ultimate date movie yet when Superman Returns, barely enough time has passed for Miss Lane's young son to grow tall enough to reach the piano keys. Never mind the other three movies (Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)) and two notable TV series (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993) and Smallville (2001))--in the 2006 version, only the actors have changed, although the filmmakers have made some remarkable advances in cloning. Superman (Brandon Routh), Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), Lux Luthor (Kevin Spacey), and Jimmie Olsen ( Sam Huntington) are interchangeable with their 1978 counterparts. Even Marlon Brando from Superman II gets a fresh credit for recycled cameo voice-overs that lack the majesty of the originals.

In Superman ver.2006, long stretches of dreamy romance and solitary soul-searching do not make for a very thrilling movie. Superman does a lot of hovering and hoisting of heavy stuff at breakneck speeds, but apart from the occasional bullet to the eye and loop de loops in space, the action sequences aren't very interesting. Superman & Lois Lane's relationship is complicated by the Man of Steel's hard-to-explain five year excursion to find his home planet while Lois Lane moved on with her life by earning a Pulitzer Prize and shacking up with her editor Perry White's nephew, Richard White (James Marsden). As a hobbyist aviator and able father to Lois' son, Marsden's character is the freshest thing in the movie modeling the integrated, multifaceted manhood Clark Kent/Superman can never achieve. Yet like all such successful members of society, his presence isn't the stuff of super heros so he tends to be left in the background, picking up the pieces of his wacky little family.

Much has been made of the spiritual aspects of Superman as he appears in this version, and certainly, the outward trappings of an only son being sent by his father to a world in need of a savior then suffering a miraculous revival after clinical death has a familiar ring. But the ending will reveal that Superman Returns has more in common with the Christ of The Davini Code than the one in the Bible and probably leave believers in the audience very relieved that they aren't asked to follow a man in a red cape wearing tights.

Judging from the surprising number of young men in the preview audience wearing T-shirts with Superman's "S" on their chests, Warner Bros. Pictures is betting on the tolerance of a large, devoted fan base eager to see their hero standing for "Truth, Justice, and Everything Else" no matter what the story line. At two-and-a-half-hours, they will surely get a predictable eyeful, but if you go, try to find a theater with very comfortable seats--it's a long ride. 

Linda LaFianza 6/28/2006