Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s?one of the worst movies of the year!
Talk about a missed opportunity, ?My Super Ex-Girlfriend? is an embarrassment of riches that continues the downward spiral of Ivan Reitman, the once-bankable director of pop cultural classics like 1981’s ?Stripes? and 1984’s ?Ghostbusters.? But Reitman hasn’t had a critical or commercial hit since 1993’s ?Dave,? and his latest misfire represents a new low after 1998’s ill-conceived ?Six Days Seven Nights? and 2001’s ?Ghostbusters? rip-off ?Evolution.?
That’s too bad, because it sure sounded like a good idea on paper. In ?My Super Ex-Girlfriend,? a hapless New York City architect named Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) meets mild-mannered Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) on the subway, only to eventually discover that his new girlfriend is really G-Girl, a dynamic superhero who fights for truth, justice and the perfect hairstyle.
But despite the sexual excitement of dating a superhero, Matt grows weary of Jenny’s high-maintenance, neurotic, possessive behavior and decides to break up with her. That’s easier said than done, and when the broken-hearted Jenny uses her powers to get back at Matt by making his life miserable, Matt learns the hard way that hell hath no fury like a superhero scorned.
The fact that ?My Super Ex-Girlfriend? doesn’t work on a number of levels is a shame, since the timing was perfect for a superhero comedy after the recent box office success of more serious comic book-based movies like ?X-Men: The Last Stand? and ?Superman Returns.? But there’s no getting around the fact that the story is weak, most of the jokes fall horribly flat and the special effects are cheesy as hell.
The acting isn’t much to write home about either, which is surprising, given that Uma Thurman seems perfectly cast as G-Girl after her butt-kicking role in the ?Kill Bill? movies. But in an effort to give it her comedic best, she lays it on way too thick, forcing Luke Wilson to keep the film grounded with the restrained everyman charm that he brings to most of his roles.
As for the supporting characters, Anna Faris, who plays Wilson’s attractive co-worker, is a little too self-aware of her performance like she was in the ?Scary Movie? series (which makes sense, since she filmed ?My Super Ex-Girlfriend? at the same time as ?Scary Movie 4?), while Eddie Izzard is under-utilized at Thurman’s arch-nemesis. Only Rainn Wilson (currently seen on TV’s ?The Office?) gets the best laughs, and even those come at the expense of playing the cliché-ridden, wisecracking best friend.
In Hollywood, nobody really sets out to make a bad movie — well, almost nobody. Even so, by the time ?My Super Ex-Girlfriend? wraps up after 95 plodding minutes, you’ll find yourself asking how so many talented professionals could come together to make a film that’s so heroically silly. Unfortunately, that’s a question that even Superman, Batman or Spider-Man won’t be able to answer.
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