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Superhero Movie
Dimension Films (The Weinstein Company), MGM

Superhero Movie reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 33 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
4.6 out of 10
based on 14 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 43 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for crude and sexual content, comic violence, drug references and language

Starring Drake Bell, Sara Paxton, Christopher McDonald, Pamela Anderson, Tracy Morgan, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, and Leslie Nielsen

How many superheroes does it take to save the world? The creators of The Naked Gun and Scary Movie answer this question in hysterical David Zucker fashion with the uproarious comedy Superhero Movie. Meet Rick Riker. He's young, he's cool, and he's got superpowers. Now, if he only knew how to use them... But the world is in danger, and no one is safe when Zucker and the gang--headed by the hilarious cast of Drake Bell, Leslie Nielsen, Tracy Morgan, Pamela Anderson, Regina Hall, and many others--take aim at some of the biggest blockbusters of our time, including Spider-Man, Batman, X-Men, and Fantastic Four, to name a few. On March 28, learning to fly, spinning a web, and busting a gut has never been this much fun. (The Weinstein Company)


GENRE(S): Action  |  Comedy  
WRITTEN BY: Craig Mazin  
DIRECTED BY: Craig Mazin  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: July 8, 2008 
Theatrical: March 28, 2008 
RUNNING TIME: 85 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

58
The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Undiscriminating comedy fans hungering for the High School High of superhero parodies need look no further.
Read Full Review
50
Variety Dennis Harvey
Given the abysmal quality of recent spoof pics, it's saying something that Superhero Movie provides a fairly steady stream of midsized laughs -- and even the 40% or so of gags that just lie there aren't actively painful.
Read Full Review
50
Boston Globe Ty Burr
How can you tell the target age for Superhero Movie is exactly 13 1/2 years? Because most of the jokes are Internet-related.
Read Full Review
50
Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen
The very act of writing critically about Superhero Movie inspires something of an existential crisis -- no one likely to turn out for it is reading this review, and anybody reading this review is probably not inclined to see it under any circumstances.
Read Full Review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson
Puerile and idiotic it may be, but Superhero Movie is nonetheless smarter than most of its lowbrow brethren in the Hollywood sub-sub-category known as the spoof movie.
Read Full Review
42
Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Seems to have been given the comedy equivalent of blood thinner. It has the blazing satirical boldness to skewer the first Tobey Maguire Spider-Man -- and, amazingly, not much else.
Read Full Review
40
Empire Tony Horkins
This super-powered spoof just doesn't fly.
Read Full Review
40
Film Threat Felix Vasques Jr.
What's shocking about Superhero Movie is not that it's been advertised to death on Nickelodeon to impressionable children, but that it's a completely on-the-nose satire of "Spider-Man.”
Read Full Review
40
Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
The gags are consistently weak, though actor Miles Fisher turns in a hair-raising impression of Tom Cruise.
Read Full Review
40
The Hollywood Reporter Frank Scheck
By-the-numbers screen parody fails to resurrect an increasingly tired genre.
Read Full Review
30
LA Weekly Luke Y. Thompson
Predictable, flat, full of name-dropping, tragically unhip, and likely to make a decent amount of cash.
Read Full Review
30
The New York Times A.O. Scott
No real mockery is intended by this harmless, mindless grab bag of slightly used gags, which lampoons some of the conventions of recent comic-book epics and adds the expected staples of juvenile humor: urine, vomit and intestinal gas.
Read Full Review
20
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
It's a tonally confused comedy which, for once, doesn't go far enough comedically.
Read Full Review
0
TV Guide Ken Fox
This abysmal "Spider-Man" satire has more in common with the lamentable spate of "Epic" and "Date Movies" than Zucker and Nielsen's truly funny "Naked Gun" series.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 4.6 (out of 10) based on 43 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Jay H. gave it a6:
Okay, it's no classic comedy, but it did make me laugh. The cast is good, it has a funny premise. I enjoyed it. Cleverly written at times.

Sue J. gave it a0:
We took our 9 and 11 year old to see this. It was shocking. We couldn't believe it was a 12a. We were totally misled by the title and rating. The film sensors have obviously lost the plot! Even if was an 18 who wants to see a woman with 2 tampax shoved up her nose. Total trash not suitable for any normal person to view let alone children.

Joey K. gave it a4:
Not nearly as bad as I expected. Cinematically, it's horrid. Satirically, it's uninspired. Most of the jokes worked on some level, even if it was immaturity, and only a few gags were terrible. The real surprise was that there were a couple of genuinely clever and funny jokes in there. This movie doesn't do anything to recover the reputation of gag based satires, but it succeeded just enough to be passable.

D D gave it a1:
Sucky plot and dumb comedy....Rather watch Scary Movie 1 over and over again before I watch this again.

Chad S. gave it a2:
Eric Holmberg, the narrator of "Hells Bells 2: The Dangers of Rock 'n' Roll", a right-wing, and occasionally right-on the money documentary about the inherent evil in popular music, complained that Hollywood often treats the Buddhists with kid gloves, while Christians have to deal with lampoon after lampoon about their faith on a regular basis. Well, Holmberg would certainly be pleased with "Superhero Movie", in which Dragonfly(Drake Bell) throws body blow after body blow into the Dalai Lama's solar plexus. Barry Andrews, the lead singer of Shreikback, wrote an amazing song called "Gunning for the Buddha"(from the album "Big Night Music"), that was incredibly offensive, but undeniably artful, and ultimately, provocative. "Superhero Movie" is not artful, or provocative. Beating up the Dalai Lama is just plain mean. The "Police Squad" movies, starring Leslie Nielsen, were irreverent, but nice. When Priscilla Presley stepped down from a ladder, and Lieutenant Frank Drebit said, "Nice beaver," before the King's widow produces an actual beaver. That was funny. What's not funny? Disturbing a scantily-dressed female corpse at an open casket burial. There's not an actor alive who could make this funny. Nielsen, he tries.

Evan gave it a0:
This is the first film I've ever walked out on...it's hard to describe in words how low-brow and devoid of humour this film is. I didn't have any preconceptions of the movie before I saw it, so I wasn't already a hater. Having said that, I certianly am now.

Jake gave it a10:
Cindy: Sex? Really? Sweet! I'm so going to see this one now. Any other suggestions?

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