Paragon Pundit Hero Movie Review #16

Paragon Pundit Hero Movie Review

#16: Supergirl

After the abysmal 1983 movie “Superman III”, father-and-son super-producers Alexander and Ilya Salikind decided to change things up a bit and bring Kal-El’s cousin Kara to the silver screen.

“Supergirl” was released by Tri-Star Pictures in 1984 after the hassles Warner Brothers executives gave the Salikinds for turning the Superman franchise into a Richard Pryor vehicle. (It could have been worse, though… they could have had Gene Wilder in with them, with Mel Brooks playing Perry White just for good measure.) The film was directed by French director Jeannot Szwarc, whose past works included “Jaws 2” and “Somewhere in Time”, which featured “Superman” actor Christopher Reeve. (He would later direct several episodes of the pseudo-Superman TV series “Smallville”.) The movie stars Faye Dunaway, Peter O’Toole, Mia Farrow, Brenda Vacarro, Simon Ward, Mark McClure, Maureen Teefy, Hart Bochner, and the then-debut of Helen Slater as the Maid of Might herself.

You can tell that Ilya was trying to recreate the same magic as the first “Superman” movie by the big names, casting a relative unknown for the one wearing the “S”, and also with the addition of McClure recreating his role of Jimmy Olson to connect this movie to the whole franchise. Reeve was supposed to appear as a cameo, but thankfully backed out, although he would appear as Superman on a poster.

We start in a weird community called “Argo City”, which exists in this equally weird trans-dimensional space powered by a device called the Omegahedron. It’s this device that supposedly saved Argo City when the planet Krypton exploded, although it doesn’t really explain why the city and its people bear no resemblance at all to the Krypton we know from “Superman” and “Superman II”.

Their great savior Zaltar (O’Toole) has foolishly taken the Omegahedron out of its safekeeping to demonstrate it to young Kara Zor-El (Slater). As he explains its power and how it has kept the people of Argo City safe for all these years, Kara mentions that they know all about her cousin Kal-El and how he has become this legend known as Superman, and how she would love to see him some day. Unfortunately, she’s distracted, and the thing she created with the Omegahedron shatters the nearby window, sucking out the Omegahedron into the great void. As Zaltar assumes responsibility for what happened, Kara tells her parents Zor-El and Alura (Ward and Farrow) that she must retrieve the Omegahedron herself. She takes the ship that will follow the Omegahedron to wherever it went… which by no coincidence is EARTH.

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice…

Oh, wait, it doesn’t exist in this series…

On Earth, a struggling witch named Selene (Dunaway) is moping about with her lackey Bianca (Vacarro) when she encounters the strange device. She realizes that with it, she can perform real magic. So she takes off with the strange object that just literally fell out of the sky… at the same time we hear through the car radio that Superman has left the planet for some off-world emergency. Actually, given the number of coincidences that are about to happen in the course of this movie, we all probably wish we could leave the planet.

At some point during her travels, Kara decides to step out of the craft (but we don’t know why) and make her debut wearing the classic blue-and-red outfit of Supergirl. She didn’t start out wearing the outfit. We don’t know WHY she decided to wear it. We also don’t know why she arrived on the planet by flying OUT OF A LAKE when the Omegahedron arrived by falling out of the sky. We also find out that immediately after flying out of the lake that she is fully aware and experienced in using her super-powers, although she knows absolutely NOTHING about Earth culture, as witnessed by two truckers trying to attack her without recognizing the outfit she is wearing.

The remarkable string of coincidences continue as she ends up enrolling in a boarding school under the name “Linda Lee” and says she is the cousin of famed Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent. She is roomed with a girl named Lucy… as in Lucy LANE (Teefy), the younger sister to Daily Planet reporter LOIS LANE. She knows all about Superman, because of her sister, and also because of her boyfriend Jimmy… as in Jimmy OLSON (McClure), Superman’s pal and photographer for the Daily Planet. Will the streak of coincidences ever end? Not until the credits roll!

Turns out that Supergirl (as Linda) and Selene both like this guy Ethan (Bochner), although with Selene it’s more lust than like. Supergirl encounters Selene as the witch tries to rattle Ethan silly. This leads to a lakeside conversation between Supergirl and Ethan. Then as Selene uses the Omegahedron to enhance her power over the area, she sends Supergirl into an “eternal void”…which looks remarkably like the Phantom Zone. Well, actually IT IS the Phantom Zone, and we get the first-ever view of it from the inside. It’s not that impressive. It actually looks a lot like Dagobah in “The Empire Strikes Back” only with really bad lighting and no diminutive backward-talking teacher. Instead we have Zaltar, who is so O’drunk he could really be O’Pickled because he was thrown into the Phantom Zone for screwing up. Why couldn’t they have just kept him in Argo City and have him watch as everyone else suffocated, you ask? Well then the actor who plays Zaltar couldn’t show how well he plays an O’drunk.

Supergirl decides to play up to Zaltar’s drunken state by getting tipsy herself and then prodding him into revealing that the so-called “inescapable” Phantom Zone had a way out.

What? You mean that Zod, Ursa, and Non could have escaped all this time WITHOUT needing help from a thermonuclear bomb in space? And how could some flaky drunk know a flaw to the Phantom Zone that its creator JOR-EL didn’t apparently know of or else would have told his son? You remember Jor-El, don’t you? White hair, father of Kal-El of Krypton, looks like Marlon Brando… I guess I’m making too much sense here.

Anyway, Supergirl manages to escape from the “inescapable” Phantom Zone WITHOUT the need of a thermonuclear bomb in space. She encounters Selene one more time, whom at this point has pretty much become a two-bit empress, betraying everyone, including her friends and lackeys, just because of the power she now has. When Supergirl arrives, Selene merges with the power of the Omegahedron to become…. GALACTUS! Oh, wait, that’s twenty years (and a few reviews) too soon. She becomes this huge smoke creature that grabs Supergirl and twists her like a Stretch Armstrong doll. Our young heroine is about to give up, but then she hears the voice of Zaltar prodding her forward, and she forces herself to suck the smoke-filled monster into the same “endless void” (aka the Phantom Zone) that she just escaped from.

Supergirl gives a very awkward and lame good-bye to Lucy and Jimmy, and an even worse one to Ethan, and then with the Omegahedron in hand, she flies back INTO the lake and soars towards Argo City so it can come back to life and the people can be saved. Roll the credits.

There, I just saved you some Netflix money.

Where do I begin with this?

The number of coincidences with this movie are not just beyond belief… they are beyond comprehension. The cousin of Clark Kent being roomed up with the sister of Lois Lane, whose boyfriend is Jimmy Olson? I was waiting for the headmistress or even the half-witted boy-toy to be related to Perry White, and having Selene be related to Lex Luthor, and one of her cohorts being related to either Miss Teschmacher or Otis. Or maybe the school was funded by one of those companies owned by Ross Webster, the greedy millionaire that served as the villain to “Superman III”.

The level of super-stupidity is equally apparent in this movie. Kara Zor-El knows that Kal-El is both Superman and Clark Kent, she knows how to speak English, she knows all of the powers of her cousin, yet she doesn’t know what a brassiere is? The drunk headmistress and two redneck truck drivers don’t recognize the colors of Superman on a blond-haired girl, even though everyone knows that Superman just left the planet? And don’t get me started on the whole thing with the lake!

Sadly, the only things that the Salkinds did right were the casting and the Supergirl costume. Helen Slater played an excellent naïve and determined Supergirl. Unfortunately the movie suffered greatly by the one-two super-punch of cheese and bad writing. The only other redeeming factor was that it would NOT be the worst from the Superman series…with that particular distinction just a few years away.

Capes:	Only two out of five capes. Supergirl bounces between noble and clueless. She seems to know what to do, but doesn’t have a good explanation how or why.
Cheese:	Full-blown Limburger (5) cheese as super-stupidity runs amok!
Books:	With all of those coincidences and bad writing, it should come as to no surprise that this movie can only squeeze out one book out of five, and that is being super-generous.