Superhero Movie: Grade B

B
Superhero Movie (2008)
Drake Bell, Sarah Paxton, with Leslie Nielsen and Tracy Morgan. Writer & Director Craig Mazin.

This spoof of the superhero movies has tons of laughs, most of them broad and obvious. The opening sequence, in which the young protagonist Bell gets banged on the head and knocked down three times in quick succession, fairly sets the tone. Still, if you like slapstick, and I do, you have to admit that these stunts were done perfectly.

Bell is bitten by a radioactive dragonfly and acquires super powers. The Spider Man references are played to the hilt, but there are also good spoofs of Batman, Superman, some of the X-men, and even Mission Impossible and that scene in The Firm, where Tom Cruise hides on the ceiling, dripping sweat as Gene Hackman hunts him just below. Of course, in puerile form, it’s not sweat but another bodily fluid in this parody. My favorite joke was the dragonfly explaining what he was doing on a rooftop. “Why I’m just perching here on this gargoyle, gazing meaningfully out over the city,” he answers, as if that were the standard and customary behavior of a superhero, which it was, for Batman and Spider Man at least. This film is not as funny as The Naked Gun or Scary Movie, but good writing makes it just a cut above average.