Man of Steel

Man of Steel is a solid 90 minutes of story crammed into 144 minutes of running time. The film begins with a half hour - long prologue telling us just why Ma and Pa El put baby Kal in a spaceship and sent him to Earth (Hey, comparative religion nerds: look up “El” on Wikipedia!), and why General Zod is gonna come and get him. This could've been handled with a three-minute montage.

Fast forward to Kansas, which is populated by jerks, bullies, and fat people. Oh, and the improbably attractive Ma & Pa Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), who teach Baby Kal, now named Clark, that America is full of jerks and bullies, and that he'd better keep his head down.

Now, I know that each storyteller gets to tell the story he wants, but a Superman who wasn't raised on Truth, Justice, and The American Way is just some bodybuilder in blue long johns.

Back to the story: Clark grows up into Henry Cavill and decides to be in a Christopher Nolan movie, one loaded with deep blues, blacks, and grays (with one exception: the caressing, golden light that seems to envelop him whenever he turns his head). He's afraid of intolerant Americans, so he keeps his head down. But look out: here comes Lois Lane (Amy Adams, lit and photographed by people who don't seem to like her), and she's about to blow his cover!

Great. By now, we're an hour and a half into this movie, nothing interesting is happening, and Superman's still just some bodybuilder shopping for blue long johns.

Eventually, Zod shows up and things get interesting. He brings lots of minions, and Superman fights them all, one by one. This is still an ugly movie with a blue and grey palette, but the super-fights between (our hero? I guess. The movie is named after him and there's all that golden lighting.) Kal and the evil Kryptonians do a wonderful job of showing us what single combat between super-beings might look like. They're incredibly fast. They pack walloping punches. When they throw things, those things have weight and do damage. No kidding – these sequences are spectacular, and they raise the film from two to three stars in my estimation.

And then it ends in a surprising twist on the standard “Hero spares villain, but villain tries one last trick that backfires and kills him, thus satisfying audience bloodlust while leaving heroic consciences unsullied.” It shocked my kids, showed some bravery on the part of the production team, and worked.

But a solid last hour in a two-and-a-half hour movie doesn't cut it. Man of Steel is too long, too ugly, and too dour to make for a good Superman movie. I loved those big fights, but I'm still disappointed.

Wet Hot American Summer

WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, a summer camp comedy, is a bad, bad movie. It's stupid. It's poorly acted. It's badly shot. It makes MEATBALLS look like THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. And this is coming from a guy who worked four summers at a camp on Catalina Island, a guy who still nurtures fond memories of the time the Newport Beach High School Girl's Swim Team camped out at the next bay over.

And yet, ghastly as this film undoubtedly is, I can't quite bring myself to outright hate it. This is where the world of context comes into play. This film, released in 2001, was cowritten by and features Michael Showalter, who went on to give us THE BAXTER. Its stars include Michael Ian Black, who was also in THE BAXTER; Paul Rudd, who killed in THE BAXTER, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, and KNOCKED UP; Christopher Meloni, who blew everyone away with his roles in "Oz" and "Law and Order: SVU"; and (most importantly) Elizabeth Banks, who has helped to give us SPIDER-MAN, SEABISCUIT, THE BAXTER, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, the incomparable SLITHER, and INVINCIBLE, plus a great turn in "Scrubs." And she kisses a girl. Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce play the grownups, and they get a pass on general principle. Had I seen this movie in 2001, I'm sure I would have hated it outright. Seeing it in 2007, I see a bunch of talented people figuring out how a third act transition works, how to hit a mark, how to act onscreen. I see people who are still unsure of themselves and going for easy, parodic schtick, and I know they'll mature and go on deliver clever, character-based work.

Still, I can't recommend WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER. Not even for Paul Rudd completists or Elizabeth Banks fetishists. The movie made me laugh all of once, and that was more a dismayed bark than actual amusement. Just move right along to THE BAXTER, where the training wheels come off. You'll be glad you did.