Dis movie remind monster of Christmas family dinner. It sound like a good idea and everybody expekt a good time but, instead, it end up being sad, depressing, and somebody always get hit in de head wit a big wrench.
Movie begin wit lovable loser who happily married to woman way out of his league. Wife suddenly come to dis realization one day and leave him to hook up wit Footloose criminal and become drug addikt. Our hero understandably upset and, after getting beaten up by Footloose’s thugs, he inspired to become a superhero by Super Jesus t.v. show and weird trippy sekwence involving a bright lights, disembodied tentacles, and brain surgery.
He design his own superhero outfit and become…Crimson Bolt! He hang around, waiting for someting to happen, try to intervene in a crime, and get beat up. After talking to cute girl in comic book shop, he take his cue from Batman’s bat-gadgets and make a key addition to his costume: a big frikkin’ wrench he use to hit people wit. Dis little tweak make all de difference and soon, Crimson Bolt be taking on drug dealers, child molesters, and line cutters.
Up to dis point, movie vacillate, sometimes awkwardly, between darkly humorous and weirdly discomforting, but here it start veering into downer territory. Crimson Bolt crash bad guy’s house wit his trusty big wrench only to get chased off and shot in de leg. He seek help of girl from comic book shop who, thrilled to find out his true identity, decide to create her own outfit and become his sidekick, Bolty!
Meanwhile, Footloose’s thugs go to our hero’s house to deal wit him – and end up shooting some poor, innocent detective instead.
Armed wit guns and bombs, Crimson Bolt and Bolty attack Footloose’s house. Bolty get half her face blasted off and killed instantly – which be de least funny ting monster have seen in a comedy since Hangover II. De entire movie.
Dis make Crimson Bolt angrier den Grover after last call. He shoot and blow up bad guys. Old Batman-style sound effects flash up on screen: POW! BAM!
He take on Footloose and get de upper hand. Footloose pleads for his life: “You really think that killing me… stabbing me to death is going to change the world?”
To which Crimson Bolt reply: “I can’t know that for sure, unless I try!”
And he does.
Our hero saves his wife and brings her home. And dey live happily ever after.
No. Correction. Our hero saves his wife and brings her home. And she leaves him for someone else.
But our hero is happy because he convince himself dat his wife’s new kids will someday save de world.
And he has pet bunny to console him.
Verdikt: A pretty funny premise dat be very poorly executed. Unlike Kick-Ass’s amusing cartoon over-de-top violence, de shootings, bludgeonings, and blow-ups in Super be pretty grounded and graphic, undermining most of de humor. What could have been a great dark comedy instead end up being weird, uneven, and depressing.
Rating: 4 chocolate chippee cookies.
Wow, Cookie, good spot on that cheer-leading connection. I didn’t know you had such a talent for costuming.
In other news, I’ve been frowning so hard since that “half her face blasted off and killed instantly” line that I’ve invented a whole new frown called “shaky frown”.
interesting, i would never had went for this! but now… i may give it a try! Oh, I have seen Oblivion, I rather liked it, although the final scenes were defo rushed through, and the end was disapointing.. i mean. a giant triangle robot alien with a female voice name Sally… hugh!! pleeeaaaase!!
Here is the pira*e link: [edit for “not getting into trouble” reasons]
sounds and images quality is not the best! lol but it is manageable 🙂
good CGI though, nice athmosphere to it, again.. such a pity about the ending.. man!!! :/
Have a good evening alls !
Joe is this you on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cookie.monsterstein I friend requested you I remember you saying you deleted your FB account before did you make a new one to interact with us more
“Bolty get half her face blasted off and killed instantly..” Wow, I didn’t see that coming. How sad. What was the point? 😥
Well, that was excruciatingly dreary. And disturbing. And awful.
Cookie, I read your review before watching the movie tonight (what? I’m behind schedule!) and couldn’t imagine that the first part was actually the more upbeat section. WRONG! It was just unrelentingly negative. In fact, it grew quite horrifying and desperate by the end.
It’s clear that Frank is actually insane, with a health dose of psychotic tendencies (the “dream” sequence? Yikes). Although, it would seem that most of the characters are likewise grossly dysfunctional, to some degree or another. Fun stuff!
I agree that there is a germ of a good idea in the whole thing, but it’s all just so horribly handled that it completely masks any potential. We’ve watched a lot of terrible movies in this series, but this is the first one that actually made me feel physically ill. I wish I had more to say about the whole thing, but it’s just kind of left me – bleh.
At least the bunny was cute.
I guess we were watching the same movie. But I found this movie far more disturbing than Cookie Monster seems to have. First, I found the hero of the movie to be not only creepy, but so mentally deranged I could find no sympathy for him. What humor there was seemed awkward to me, as if the writer wanted to do a serious movie about mental illness, then decided he had to throw in some laughs, then failed miserably at it. The “guy’s butt in the air in the back seat of his car” was meh, but then they do the totally unfunny “if I go to jail I become somebody’s wife” scene. And while our hero survives, somehow, he only does so because the bad guys are so completely incompetent at shooting him that he has time to escape.
Even Nathan Fillion hamming it up wasn’t enough to overcome the flaws in this movie. Though if the movie had concentrated on the bible hero parody, I might actually have liked it. But unsympathetic hero, even less sympathetic sidekick, the lack of even a marginally competent nemesis….too many misses for my like. 2 out of 10 cookies. And I imagine there are a fair number of actresses and actors who are still undergoing therapy for their part in this production.
I haven’t heard of this movie, but just wanted to mention. I think Aniplex will be releasing Fate/Zero in a cheaper boxset Joe. No idea if you’ve seen this show, it’s brilliant and a prequal to Fate/Stay NIght and has 2 seasons.
Anyway I say this because Aniplex are releasing and don’t laugh, dubbed episodes of this series, when they originally released this boxset subtitled only with Japanese audio.
Which suggests to me that they will be re releasing this show on DVD at a cheaper price to reach a more mainstream audience and make back the dubbing costs.
Something to look out for anyway Joe. Personally I like a series called A Certain Magical Index, it’s brilliant and is based off a 25 book light novel series, with 2 seasons of 24 episodes already made, and a third on the horizon, it’s kinda amazing.
They also did A Certain Scientific Railgun too which is based in the same universe/city as Index, with the focus on a girl called Misaka Makoto. That’s a 2 season show too lol
The storylines for both shows do kinda intersect, with Misaka appearing in Index, and Toma(The guy from Index) appearing in Railgun too. If that makes sense.
Haven’t made an anime suggestion comment in a while so, just throwing that out there lol
Maybe for a couple of weeks we let cookie actually review a movie he likes and give him a break from crap movies like this one.
I thought Super was an interesting movie, veering wildly from hilarious to disturbing to massively violent.
A likely truer representation of what would happen if anyone tried to be a superhero without actually having a superpower. They start off as an amusing distraction tackling small time petty things before trying to do something bigger ending up with them get shot, arming themselves and turning into a vigilante.
This movie wasn’t bad. Not like Super Capers was bad. On the whole the acting was OK and the production values were fair. But, holy crap was it depressing! Not humorously depressing like Heathers but depressingly depressing like American Beauty.
I don’t think there was a normal, well balanced character in this whole film! Frank is a born loser with psychopathic tendencies. Libby is cute, fun and a total sadistic nutjob. Frank’s wife is a broken drug addict. Footloose is a small-time drug dealer with delusions of grandeur.
What could have been an interesting exploration of the blurred line between superheroism and vigilantism devolves into morass of self-destructive behaviour. What could have been a touching insight into mental illness that makes a man believe he’s a superhero ends up being a violent snuff film with no redeeming features.
I enjoy gratuitous violence in movies as much as the next guy and when God’s tentacles came out and performed brain surgery on Frank I thought I’d figured this movie out. I thought it was going to turn into some sort of live-action anime with weird, inexplicable monsters and glorious action setpieces. Alas, no.
And yet, we’re still presented with several WTF questions. Why were the cops so totally incompetent? The only one to figure out who the Crimson Bolt was ended up getting killed shortly after . . . without telling any of his colleagues where he was going. And that was the last we heard of him. No investigation about missing police detectives. Did Frank wonder where all the blood splattered on his wall came from? And then there’s the rather large body count at the end. Sure, the police could dismiss a lot of it as two drug gangs having a go at each other but even the most perfunctory forensics investigation would have shown a third party involved. Not to mention Libby’s brains splattered all over the garden. And what of Libby? How did Frank dispose of the body? Did Libby’s friends, family and workmates ever wonder what happened to her? Would they go to the police and mention that weirdo called Frank who prompted Libby to kick them all out of her housewarming party a day or two before she disappeared?
Loose ends! I hate loose ends!
I hope The Green Hornet is a bit more fun. I like Ryan Reynolds. He’s funny. What? He’s The Green Lantern? What the hell is The Green Hornet then?
@thornyrose: I completely agree about the whole “mental illness documentary” thing – I actually had a whole paragraph about that, but deleted it for some reason. You said it much better, anyway. And indeed, Super Jesus would have been a more interesting and (hopefully) less violent character to concentrate on.
I would have actually taken two cookies AWAY from this movie. And then maybe hit it over the head with a wrench.
This movie would fall in to the category of “Things Your Can’t Unsee”!! Because based on those stills and that review I am glad I didn’t see it!! 🙂
Question Joe: How the heck to you get you pictures that size on your blog or is just the theme you use?
Cookie, I am sorry you had to sit thru this one, and I am glad I did not have to, still celebrating my bd(22nd) so sending you a dozen virtual cookies,, oatmeal chocolate chip and some peanut butter to help you out. You da Cookie man!!
0_o f! Cookie, you’re doing a public service by warning us about these movies. Hope you are not scarred. They need to pay you chocolate chippee cookies in compensatory damages. But Nathan Fillion’s in this one? Hmm! 😉 No, better back away…
C-man, I think we may have missed watching a cool super hero/comic book movie, UltraViolet (2006).
Saw it the weekend before last on cable. I’m appreciating the genre more and more. It’s not meant to be Oscar material, but I did enjoy it. Terrific tongue-in-cheek humor from the opening “comic book hero” credits for the crew. Gotta pause w/ the remote to catch ’em. Thought if they paid that much attention to detail, it would probably be worth the watch. It was! Visually you get snagged from the beginning with lots of the color — what else? — violet in the lighting and art direction. A female protagonist defends a child, well played by the young Stargate SG-1 alum, Cameron Bright. Won’t spoil anything, but wonder what others might think about certain story points.
C-man. Meant to say “C-mon,” oopsie.Out of context video remark!
That video link was supposed to start at 2:44.
I watch A LOT of movies but I’ve never heard of this one. Where does Cookie find all of the stinkers?
I think I can cross that one off my list. Thanks Cookie for an informative review!
Yikes, tough crowd!
I’m of the opinion that a movie doesn’t have to have a happy ending to be good. If the medium made you think or feel something you normally wouldn’t, it did its job. I concede that if you wanted to be mildly entertained for 90 minutes Super is probably not the best choice.
I think Cookie’s review left out two key plot elements that add to the narrative of the film. When Bolty rescues Bolt with the car and their intimate scene. The two scenes further blur the line between fantasy and the reality of what Bolt is trying to accomplish.
Yikes. It’s been this long since I’ve visited? Shame on me. I’ve been in bed with this horrible virus Patrick gave me. Or working when I’m not sleeping. And this week, working on daily teacher appreciation gifts for 13 people. Sounds like this movie might have helped me going to sleep. I never heard of it before today.