The famous poster for this film depicts Superman (Christopher Reeve) carrying Richard Pryor as he's flying. It warns the audience ahead of time what this film is like - a more comedic version of a Superman film than the previous two. Pryor as Gus Gorman is introduced in the very first scene, before even the credits, as he stands in an unemployment line for the last time. It's glaringly unfunny - and then the credits begin over scenes of various pratfalls and mishaps on the streets of Metropolis. Again, these just don't work well - both a paean to Chaplin-era silent comedy and a suggestion that such constant chaos needs a Superman to always watch out for us. Did we need to see all this..? Not really. Blame director Richard Lester, who learned the wrong lessons from his gig on Superman II (1980).
For about the first half of this film, this comes across as just another Pryor comedy: Gus is a loser without a job but decides to enroll in a computer class, where it's revealed that he's a computer genius. He catches the eye of the villain of the piece, an ego-maniacal billionaire (Robert Vaughn) who is aided by his grim sister (Annie Ross) and a hot paramour (Pamela Stephenson) who is pretending to be stupid. Pretty soon, Gus is causing bad weather in Colombia via a satellite (all over the villain's hissy fit about coffee). Since Superman corrects things in Colombia, he becomes the next target. Gus has some imperfect, artificial kryptonite manufactured and only then does the film become moderately interesting - Superman begins to act out of character, until he's reduced to brooding and drinking in a bar.
This all leads to a battle between two Supermans in a junkyard (or, more accurately, a fight between Superman and the good Clark Kent). For the final act, Superman faces off against a new super computer which had been constructed in a cave following Gus's designs. Since this new machine can devise a beam of true kryptonite, Superman seems to be in deep doodoo. Fortunately for him, Gus has been having a change of heart by this point.
The other major plot point in the story is Clark Kent's return to his hometown of Smallville and the possible kindling of a romance with former classmate Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole). Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) appears only in one early scene before going off on vacation and returns only for the final scene. These portions of the film are like an early version of the later Smallville series - Lang & Lane actually meet at the end, a historic moment in film. However, even the Smallville scenes are ruined by a drunken bore character (Gavan O'Herlihy); there's a very long scene of him and Gus together.
The real disappointment here are most of Pryor's scenes - it would have worked better if they actually were funny; only one truly is - when Gus meets the villain's sister. The best example of Pryor's ineffectiveness is when he dresses up as an army general and makes a dopey speech; Superman and all the other people in the scene look embarrassed for him; that more-or-less spells it out for Pryor's role. Vaughn, Ross and Stephenson actually do better in their roles, though they can't be regarded as any sort of serious threat, usually veering the film towards camp. O'Toole retains her dignity, at least. And, the final clash against a machine intelligence was a bit ahead of its time, perhaps a film version of the well-known comic book adversary Braniac. The conversion of a character into a creepy cyborg was spooky indeed and anticipated the later Borg on Star Trek TNG. But, most of the film is lacking in much entertainment value or a strong narrative. BoG's Score: 6 out of 10
BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
Posts : 3265 Join date : 2010-02-28 Location : Earth-1
