Superhero Movie (2008) - Some light spots in subpar spoof

♥♥

Familiar spoof stars and a couple of new faces adjoin on this Scary Movie-franchise poster-modeled poster for Craig Mazin's Superhero Movie

Young Rick Riker is bitten during a high school trip by a dragonfly and attains superpowers, which he uses to attract the girl he is eyeing and fight the evil Hourglass Man!

Superhero Movie is written and directed by Craig Mazin (The Specials (2000)). It doesn't begin very well with some scenes in a school bus, and the ending is also pretty shabby.
A good deal of the spoof comedy's antics fall flat to the ground, and a good deal should simply have been funnier, - such as a scene with Tracy Morgan (Deep in the Valley (2009)) as X-Men's Dr. Xavier as well as Regina Hall (When the Bough Breaks (2016)) and Pamela Anderson (Home Improvement (1991-97)), which certainly had the potential.
Superhero Movie still has laughs for undiscriminating spoof lovers; they come from Leslie Nielsen (Day by Day (1988, TV-series)), Christopher McDonald (My Sexiest Year (2007)), who does well as the predictably ridiculous Hourglass Man villain, and from young Drake Bell (Jungle Shuffle (2014)) and Sara Paxton (Pepper Dennis (2006, TV-series)) as protagonist Riker and his blond flame Jill Johnson. Both are game and well-cast.
Superhero Movie's running time is buffed grotesquely with an extremely long gag reel and extra scene-crammed credit sequence.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 35 mil. $
Box office: 71.2 mil. $
= Flop (returned 2.03 times its cost)
[Superhero Movie premiered 27 March (Russia) and runs 86 minutes. David Zucker was originally supposed to have directed the film under the title Superhero!. Shooting took place around September 2007 in Vancouver, British Colombia, California and in Kansas City, Missouri, where the New York flyover transition shots were made. The film opened #3, behind fellow new release 21 and holdover hit Horton Hears a Who, to a 9.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd week and grossed 25.8 mil. $ (36.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany with 5.5 mil. $ (7.7 %) and the UK with 5.3 mil. $ (7.4 %). Mazin has left directing alone since the film and turned to writing several successful movies and miniseries Chernobyl (2019). Bell returned in College (2008); Paxton in Wizards of Waverly Place (2008, TV-series short) and theatrically in The Last House on the Left (2009); McDonald in Player 5150 (2008). Superhero Movie is rotten at 17 % with a 3.64/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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