Superhero Movie

In a period where it seems that pop culture more than ever panders to the lowest common denominator—with seemingly no consideration for an IQ above the level of needing Post-it notes stuck to the end of the nose to remember to breathe—the spoof flicks like Epic Movie and Date Movie exist as the absolute nadir. Which makes Superhero Movie a bit of a surprise, in that it isn’t absolutely horrible. It doesn’t raise the bar much, but at least it tries by deriving the humor from the situational, not the referential. If you’ve seen Spider-Man, you know the set-up for the plot: on a class trip to a research lab, dorky Rick is exposed to an insect aphrodisiac, which leads to a situation that lends a completely new turn on the word “buggered.” It also sticks him with superpowers and all that nonsense comic books have nattered on about for decades. Abiding by the joke-a-minute template, most of the gags fall flat, but the film still delivers with enough to make this better than its ilk.