Some recent films in the fantasy/comedy genre have been so fresh, so clever, that they haven�t even needed to be that funny to work. The idea alone is so compelling, and suggests such perfect set-ups, that the job is almost done for the screenwriter as soon as it pops in his head. Bruce Almighty is one of those films, Click is another. A third could well be My Super Ex-Girlfriend, a story revolving around what happens to an ordinary guy when he dumps his insecure superhero girlfriend and the insane lengths she goes to for revenge. It�s a great set-up, and it couldn�t possibly fail. Could it?
Yes, spectacularly, and for so many reasons I doubt I�ll be able to list them all adequately within this review. My Super Ex-Girlfriend takes its smart little formula and shows that there is nothing idiotproof in this world, even though any filmmaker with half a brain could have attempted it better. Ivan Reitman, who it has to be said has directed some very good films in the past, should be slapped in irons and frogmarched to the town square�s stocks for this abomination. Sadly there are no vegetables rotten enough to make up for it.
You could argue that the film was doomed from the start. The casting of Uma Thurman in any movie is guaranteed to make it suck, and the doughy Luke Wilson, though ok, is never going to be a leading man. Rainn Wilson is the casting department�s only good move, recreating his Dwight Schrute role in a slightly less useless way and showing that he has legs as an actor. Beyond that Eddie Izzard is wasted and Anna Faris is anonymous. Thurman is genuinely lame, being neither sufficiently super nor dowdy, and ruins almost all her scenes. From the off I wanted to punch her and there is never even a flicker of reason as to why Wilson�s character Matt would see anything in her.
Reitman�s direction is also very suspect, allowing scenes to carry on too long or not long enough, accepting the worst our of all of his actors and basically getting every decision he could have made wrong. I have no doubt that he took the wrong route into work every morning and ordered an inferior coffee to boot. The editing by Wendy Greene Bricmont and Sheldon Kahn is so bad you can only presume that they were at odds throughout the process and sabotaged each others efforts to the utmost. However, Reitman must accept the blame for allowing such a shoddy product onto the market in the first place, and it goes to show that the mistakes he made on Evolution have still not been learned from.
He�s in good company though. Don Payne�s screenplay is so retarded it should be in government care. It�s not that he throws away a great idea, it�s that he does it so carelessly that hurts. This is a man who wrote a scene where G-Girl (Thurman�s super alter-ego) throws a shark at Matt. Who created the most incompetent scene I�ve ever witnessed, as New York is menaced by a rogue missile and G-Girl ums and ahs over whether to do anything about it. Who made Eddie Izzard a super-villain without any discernible genius or menace. Who includes not one but three grotesque sex scenes in what is otherwise a PG-13 movie. Honestly, if there was a bad sex award for film as well as novels, this would win hands down. Even the music is bad, sounding just like every other cheap flick ever made. My Super Ex-Girlfriend is one I�m happy to stop calling. |
