In the midst of the rejuvenation of the superhero-genre comes... a parody. Hm. It sounds like easy money for them and a stupid film for us. But hey! They put the effort in to make it decent!
There are actually some good ideas here, like the Superhero being dependent on sponsors and genuinely seeing his occupation as a job more than a call. Not to mention the fact that he's willing to get a supervillain released in order to win some of those sponsors back. And the evil 70's discovillains, complete with soundtrack from "Saturday Night Fever". Fun!
The real winner here though is the job they've done with the characters. Most of them are delightful and quite creative... Apart from Stiller of course. He rarely is creative or funny. This is not at all bad for him though, kudos to the rest of the cast for dragging him and Garofalo out of the mire. Geoffrey Rush is his usual outstanding self, and with Azaria playing it up and Macy down , good cameos by Greg Kinnear, Tom Waits and Wes Studi are a pure bonus. Add to that some fine comedic lines i.e. "I can only become invisible when no one is looking" and we're well on our way.
There are a lot of characters, though and not all of them are funny and as a comedy this film suffers greatly when the unfunny characters take the scene. Another poor choice is the romance-story. It adds nothing to anything, apart from more nuisance from Stiller.
Director Usher finds a nice pace for his flick, and remembers to insert comedy in the action as well to hit his genre well and not fall into the "stinky second half" trap. Though at times the references to other films are aplenty this isn't simply a stupid spoof like the Wayans would make. It has its own plan and plenty of its own ideas.
This film is funny and quite clever, never forgetting that it is a comedy. There is no morale, no greater point, just a nice script, with a bunch of good (and some bad) characters. It's worthy of many laughs, and a couple of hours well spent.
7/10
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