One thing about fanboys: Often they’re so in love with a concept that they are willing to overlook shoddy execution. Hence the groundswell of misplaced enthusiasm for James Gunn’s “Super,” a spoof of you-know-what that’s a lot less funny than it sounds.
With a glut of superhero flicks about to be unleashed on unsuspecting (and anticipating) moviegoers, the time would seem to be ripe for a send-up of comic-book culture — even if it covers much of the same ground as last year’s “Kick-Ass” with less finesse and a notably older cast on a much lower budget.
Instead of the bullied teenager turned DIY superhero with no superpowers in the earlier film, we get a middle-aged loser (Rainn Wilson), a fry chef whose wife (Liv Tyler, as if) leaves him for a drug dealer (Kevin Bacon, who gets to add a few more degrees of separation).
Our hero is jolted from his depression and diet of Ring Dings and roused to action when he watches a religiously themed superhero on TV. He sews himself a costume and, calling himself the Crimson Bolt, ventures forth to take on miscreants with a pipe wrench.
The idea that the Crimson Bolt first turns his wrath on someone cutting a movie line is funny; the ineptly clumsy way that Gunn (the writer of such deathless classics as “Scooby-Doo”) stages this, not so much.
As a director of actors, Gunn consistently encourages them to go over the top, which gets tired very quickly. Especially when you have a lead like Wilson, who doesn’t have all that much range to begin with.
Worse, Gunn bungles the film’s greatest gift: Oscar nominee Ellen Page (“Juno”). She plays a barely legal superhero groupie who puts together her own costume and offers herself to the very reluctant Crimson Bolt as his sidekick — and, hopefully, bedmate — Boltie.
Page’s super-perky, horny psychopath — who almost makes Wilson seem normal by comparison — collects most of the sparse laughs. But Gunn ultimately has no idea what to do with her. I suspect her fans, like me, will not be pleased with how cavalierly he treats her at the end.
Gunn is an alumnus of the Troma, the longtime Manhattan shlock factory behind “The Toxic Avenger.” His mentor, Lloyd Kaufman (who has a cameo), has inspired everyone from Trey Parker to Peter Jackson to Quentin Tarantino, but the filmmaker behind “Super” has a long way to go.