Catching up with 2011: Super
If James Gunn’s (who made the pretty good Slither) Super had maintained the same tone as its opening five minutes, then the film would have been something. Sadly, however, Super is a hodgepodge of tones that never work. Its best elements – a great supporting performance by Kevin Bacon* as a slimy strip club owner being chief among them – seem like they belong in another movie. Rainn Wilson is fine as sadsack Frank who has a vision from God to tell crime to, “Shut up!” Wilson is a talented actor that always has a way of making the most outrageous things humorous because he keeps them grounded in a semblance of reality. Of course, this is evident in a lot of Dwight Schrute’s behavior on “The Office,” but in Super, there just isn’t any kind of thread that connects the darkly absurd elements together. Consider the scene where Frank dons a fake beard to get information for his first outing as The Crimson Bolt (the superhero he thinks God wants him to be)…this seems like something that is wholly Dwight Schrute and not the character Frank in this film. One of the main problems with the film – aside from the varying tones that never click – is Ellen Page. Here, Gunn seems to think that – much like the bizarrely graphic violence – having Page over enunciate her profanity (as if to show that she’s the anti-Juno or something) is somehow funny. I’m not averse to profanity, it can often make a scene funnier, but I hate it when filmmakers think that characters swearing, especially crassly and in front of kids or having characters go against type by swearing a lot, is just funny because it somehow it is “edgy” (look, there’s a reason why Kenny Powers works as a character on “Eastbound & Down” and the fact that he swears so much isn’t part of the reason).
