"You wrote that the world doesn't need a saviour, but every day I hear people crying for one."

Mes Amis

Tonight I saw Superman Returns maybe three years after everyone else... Its a film that I didn't want to be excited about. Of all the superheroes, Supes is the one who excites me the least. He's got that irritating boy scout mentality of Captain America coupled with the fact that he's pretty much invulnerable unless someone happens to get their hands on kryptonite. Which they always, always, always do (that stuff's available in Tescos, I'm sure, on some kind of Buy one Get One Free offer).

But at the same time: John Williams score chills me to the bone every time. I love it. It just speaks to the kid inside me. It excites me, somehow. And I admit to liking the first two movies - possibly the second one a little more but mostly because Terrence Stamp ups the cool rating by several million degrees playing loony General Zod. And I trust Bryan Singer to be at least watchable. And look at the job he did on the X Men.

But Superman isn't as succesful as X-Men was. I think just by the nature of the character and the fact that he's already a movie icon in so many ways (despite his oddly ill-fitting pants that he insists on wearing outside the trousers). There's only so much Singer can do before he drifts too far. Luckily, Brandon Routh, makes a great superman and a good Clark Kent. He's channelling something of Reeves performance (but of course, this is a kind of sequel to Reeves's first two movies and pretends the poor part III and the godawful part IV* never happened) but never stoops to simply impersonating the guy. Their physical simmilarity (at least to this short-term-memory impaired movie goer) helps a little.

Kate Bosworth as Lois, however, lets the side down. A lot. Margot Kidder had a kind of inquistive and spiky nature. Bosworth just looks like a china doll. This girl's no investigative reporter. And she just doesn't have that chemistry with Supes you need to believe in. After all, a great deal of the script concentrates on the love story between Supes and Lois (A wise move, really, because you need to give Kal El**** some emotional depth to keep him interesting) and she needs to have that whole history going, the feeling that she could still be in love with him... but it never happens. When Supes takes her for a flight, that should feel like a pretty sexy scene - albeit with clothes on - with the two of them rediscovering some of that old chemistry so that it can later cause some friction between Lois and her new live-in-lover (played by Cyclops from X-Men looking just dandy after being disintegrated in X3).

And of course, we know they have a history together. After all supes has a son. Oh yes, he does. Now I have been assured that in part II when Kal El and Lois, uh, you know, did it together in the Fortress of Solitude, Superman was human (his DNA altered by some mad technological doohickey his dad had rigged up for just such an eventuality). But all the same I couldn't help thinking about Mallrats the whole time. Specifically the conversation between TS and Brody about how superman's, uh, "load" would be like a shotgun blast and kill her and how he'd have to wear a kryptonite condom, but that would kill him. At times I was near sniggering like a small child as I heard Jason Lee musing on the topic in my head. Add to that Lex Luthor does produce a device at one point in the movie that really does look like a kryptonite condom and, well...

Again if there was chemistry between Routh and Boswell this could be heartbreaking stuff. But it isn't. They might as well not even be in the same studio and the fault really is with Boswell who looks pretty much bored throughout the whole thing.

A shame too because the rest of the cast is perfect. Jimmy Olsen, boy reporter, looks like he's in another film - a screwball comedy set i the thirties - and having a blast doing it. Kevin Spacey as Luthor is...

Jeezus, I love Hackman in almost any rule, but as Luthor, Spacey kicks arse. Hackman played Luthor for laughs. And sure there's a lot of that with Spacey but when he's on an evcil scheme, man, those eyes... Yeah, this is one evil man. There's a great scene later in the movie where Luthor's managed to get Supes in a real tight spot and the callous nature of Lex comes right to the surface. Its disturbing and as one of our party noted, he's glad he came to see it before saying whether his young son could come: its actually a pretty distressing scene and that Routh made me care for Kal El even for an instant is a testament to the fact he's pretty good in this role.

This isn't as good a movie as, say, Batman Begins. It thinks its more layered than it is and sometimes it feels padded, more a sequence of events than anything else. And the love story that should hold everything together falls a little flat. But Lex and Supes are both amazing and there are some wonderful, beautifully choreographed set pieces. When everything's fitting together up there on screen and when Supes is behaving like the icon everyone knows he is... well...

You'll believe a man can fly.

Au revoir

Russel

*NUCLEAR MAN! Best villian ever.**
**Or not.***
***Yeah, definitely not.
****That's his kryptonian name, give by his father Jor-el.