SUPERMAN

"Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!"

SUPERMAN isn't really a great movie. It is solid, entertaining, and moving, but it is almost thirty years old, and it shows. I appreciate it for its revolutionary special effects and how it broke ground among comic book film adaptations. That being said though, this is hardly the best superhero film ever made.

What makes SUPERMAN still easy to relate with thirty years after the film's release and almost seventy since the first comic, is the ideals of Superman. He is the ultimate hero, weakened by neither greed, nor ambition, nor evil, but a non-human element (it starts with a 'k', people). He stands for 'truth, justice, and the American way', glorious symbols that hold up no matter what the current climate in the world is. Christopher Reeves reflects the thought process of maybe the greatest superhero, in a performance that transcends Superman's ideals.

Matching Reeves eye-to-eye is Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. He brings camp, intelligence and subdued energy to a role that requires all of these elements. Margot Kidder is Lois Lane, the sassy journalist Superman and Clark Kent fall for. Jor-El, Superman's father, is played famously and elegantly by Marlon Brando, in one of the most expensive (something to the tune of $225,000 per minute of screen time) supporting roles ever. All of the performances deliver what is needed from the characters.

This is a superbly entertaining film. It is certainly flawed, and the special effects that held audiences in awe back in the days of the late 1970s haven't held up as well as those of 1977's STAR WARS (which is an almost infinitely better film, in my opinion), and the plot really goes off the rails by the end (mostly Luthor's plot to destroy the world), but these are easy faults to forgive. With so many superhero films these days searching to de-mystify and darken the identify of their characters, it is refreshing to see a classic film, the one that started them all, glorifying its hero.

B+