Superman returns...not!

I wasn't able to watch Superman Returns when it was shown in Metro Manila's theaters last year for some forgettable reason. I finally got to watch it on HBO last night and although the film's plot was pencil-thin and still cheesy, I actually felt a wave of sentimental pleasure coursing through me.

Starring Brandon Routh who I've never heard of before this movie and who bears an uncanny resemblance to the late Christopher Reeve (the real Superman to many for his valiant battle against his disability), the film's first action sequences with Superman saving the passengers of an airplane (which included Lois Lane played by Kate Bostworth) made the hairs of my arms stand on end.

I fondly remember the first Superman movie with Reeve and Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, with a really great cast of supporting actors like Marlon Brando (as Superman's father Jor-el), Gene Hackman (as Lex Luthor), and Glenn Ford (as Clark Kent's father). It was the late 70s and I was still hung up on popular drama anthologies, impossible love stories, and cornball acting (yeah, whatever happened to Kidder's career right?). When you're young and stupid, you think you need a Superman to save you from all the idiots around you. This was the milieu I grew up in so I suppose that was the reason Superman Returns stirred up a lot of childish silly notions in me again. (You don't wanna know!)

It was fun watching Superman Returns albeit the bleah acting and idiotic storyline. (I mean Superman can't have a child with an earthling! In my child's mind, that's just too alien and immoral. He should remain pure and unblemished by thoughts of a woman's flesh. A man who's out to save us from ourselves can't have any human attachments.) I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more as another mind-numbing exercise if I had watched it on the big screen. Still, it was nice to have Superman back on the screen, even if it was just on the idiot box, just because it made me remember a part of my young life when I still believed in 18th century notions on true love. Ah well...