Monday 29th December

Superman Returns

Director: Bryan Singer
Year: 2006
Stars: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Kevin Spacey

I love Superman. It was always my favourite adapted comic as a child. Mind you, I obviously don't love it enough to go and watch this at the cinema. Which turns out to have been the right decision. Being that I do love Superman, I was never going to hate this film. It has all the elements that make Superman what it is - Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Clark Kent being desperately in love with Lois Lane, and even an overly enthusiastic Jimmy Olsen. All the elements that made me enjoy the TV show starring Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher so much (well, until it got really silly right at the end).

What this film doesn't have is any sense of when to stop. The plot, such as it is, isn't bad, and all the actors do their jobs well enough. But with a running time of 2 1/2 hours, it simply goes on for far too long. The plot would happily fill 1 1/2 hours, maybe even 2 at a push, but the makers just didn't seem to know when to stop. There seems to be an awful lot of pointless padding here.

Rating: 3 out of 5