Here's a positive review from the Philadelphia Inquirer
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/...jun27,0,2078969.story?coll=cl-movies-features
Review | A super new SupermanBy Steven Rea
INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC
If you mess with Supey, you better mess right.
Superman is such an iconic figure - the not-a-bird, not-a-plane, able-to-leap-tall-buildings, curly-forelocked, split-personality, S-chested, cape-swathed Kryptonian savior of the human race - well, he's as much a part of the pop-cult consciousness as Mickey Mouse, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles.
Bryan Singer, director of Superman Returns, has messed right. A spectacularly satisfying reworking of the legend of Kal-El, the infant sent from his imploding planet to Ma and Pa Kent's Kansas farm (where, as a lad, he takes his first clumsy football-field leaps o'er fields of corn), Singer's movie brings the DC Comics hero squarely into the 21st century, even as it pays homage to the character's Deco-era, do-good origins. (The Daily Planet, the Metropolis newspaper where Clark Kent works - between longing looks in the direction of Lois Lane - outdoes the Chrysler building for architectural splendor.)
Incorporating bits and pieces of Marlon Brando's biblical declamations from Richard Donner's 1978 hit (and John Williams' Superman theme music), Singer puts the blandly handsome, Christopher Reeve-esque newcomer Brandon Routh in the title role (and the tights). It's smart casting, because the former model and bartender, while certainly likable (and Jason Schwartzman-ish in his milquetoast Clark Kent guise), is a blank slate that audiences can project their own personal Superman fantasies on. Tabula rasa in a cape and boots.
Superman Returns begins with a ripping great rescue sequence. A space shuttle piggybacking on a Boeing 777 fails to uncouple, and when the ship's rockets automatically fire, both the shuttle and the jet zoom toward the stratosphere. The plane is full of media types, including one Ms. Lane (Kate Bosworth), and they're all going to be toast - until Clark gets wind of the disaster, makes his quick-o costume change, and is off and flying.
The near-fatal accident was the result of a freak power outage caused by some hanky-panky Lex Luthor (a bald Kevin Spacey) had going on. Superman's arch-nemesis is out of jail, has swindled a dying widow of her fortune, and is in the process of creating a whole new land mass in the mid-Atlantic, thanks to some special crystals stolen from Superman's Fortress of Solitude.
You know, the usual villainy.
Singer, who directed the first two X-Men and works here with a witty screenplay by X-Men 2's Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, offers fresh takes on Supe's talents: There's a wonderful moment when Clark/Superman uses his X-ray vision to follow Lois as she ascends floor after floor in a Daily Planet elevator. Unrequited love has never been so superpowerful.
And Lois, played by Bosworth as a busy working mom who has moved on after having her heart broken by Superman, becomes torn between her beau (James Marsden) and boy (a great new kid actor, Tristan Lebeau) and Superman - suddenly reappearing in her life (just in the nick of time to save it). The fact that Lois has a young son, and that she is living with but hasn't yet married the guy he calls Dad (Marsden), is one of Singer and company's more daring touches. It's daring on several levels, most significantly, a plot twist concerning a grand piano.
Spacey is no Keyser Soze here (the actor and his director, Singer, both launched their careers with 1995's The Usual Suspects), and at times it seems as though he's just doing a poor man's Gene Hackman, who was Christopher Reeve's Lex Luthor. And Parker Posey, as Lex's companion, Kitty Kowalski, doesn't seem quite sure how to play her dim golddigger role. But other roles are right-on: notably Frank Langella as editor Perry White and Eva Marie Saint as Clark's mother, Martha.
Superman Returns doesn't shy away from its obvious Christ themes of resurrection and sacrifice, but it's possible to get carried away with that stuff: The origins, and origin story of Superman, come from a 1941 comic book, after all, and play on a simple Good vs. Evil formula.
And this Superman is good. Very good.
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