Superhero Movie

Some jokes in this film managed to get me laughing out loud a few times. Problem is, the clunkers are so terrible that they erase the good gags from the mind. Drake Bell plays Rick Riker, an unfunny riff on Spider-Man’s Peter Parker, who is bitten by a dragonfly and gets superpowers. His arch nemesis is Hourglass (Christopher McDonald), a villain who sucks the life force out of his victims and yells a lot. The film drags Leslie Nielsen out of mothballs to do his tired shtick, and hampers the great Marion Ross with an embarrassing flatulence scene. There’s an evil gag involving Dr. Stephen Hawking that cracked me up, and another involving Tom Cruise that had me smiling. Otherwise, it’s one stinker after another, with far too many bodily function gags for any one film. This wastes the talents of Tracy Morgan, who looks lost as Professor Xavier of X-Men fame.