967. Super (2010)

Starring: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler

Director: James Gunn

Running Time: 97 mins

Super is an American film about an everyday man who finds his wife is having an affair with a prolific drug dealer, and in order to get her back, he makes up his own superhero to fight evil, however his questionable methods land him in more trouble than expected.

Right, from the trailer, most people (including myself) would go into this movie expecting a crazy superhero comedy a lot like Kick-Ass. However, once the establishing stages of this film that are like that are out of the way, this turns into a seriously dark and disturbing black comedy that’s more uncomfortable to watch than it is exciting.

The beginning of this film is exactly as you would expect. This everyday man has his wife taken from him, so he makes up a superhero to save her, and goes through the initial problems of being pretty rubbish seeing as he has no powers, which is a relatively entertaining and funny period of this movie.

However, in that period, there are flashes that everything is going to turn a lot darker, mainly seen by the main character’s extremely brutal methods of fighting crime, which you initially discount as stupid and comical, but as the film develops, you being to realise that it’s something much more disturbed.

To be honest, it’s not the violence or the language that is disturbing about this film. That’s very strong, yes, and this is a little bit more sweary and a lot more gory than Kick-Ass, but that can at least be seen to some extent as something a little bit more comical.

However, as the story unfolds, and everything becomes a lot less funny and a lot more serious, it’s the themes that are disturbing. The representation of the drug dealing racket isn’t very pleasant, and a lot grittier than you would expect, but what’s worse is the constant recurrences of really disturbing adult themes such as rape that just aren’t at all entertaining to watch, no matter how this film tries to make it so.

Therefore, you’ve got a film here which is trying to make you laugh with its black comedy, however it goes way too far and turns into an overly dark and properly uncomfortable film that you will not enjoy watching at all, so that’s why it gets a 6.7 from me.