Super

Here’s what happens when Observe and Report meets Kick-Ass and the meeting doesn’t go well. Hopped up on Christian TV and having lost his junkie-babe wife (Liv Tyler, foggy) to a sleazy drug dealer (Kevin Bacon, hollow), a sad-sack loser (Rainn Wilson, typical) sews himself a jumpsuit, grabs a plumber’s wrench and sets out to right his world’s wrongs. “Shut up, crime!” he shouts, bludgeoning his way through all the vengeful rage and sexual angst that got pent up during adolescence and has festered into early middle age. This man needs help, and he gets the wrong kind, from a spazzy, too-willing sidekick (Ellen Page, dauntless). The result isn’t without laughs, but it drags. Veteran writer-director James Gunn (also of Slither and the Scooby-Doo movies) doesn’t quite know what to do with his actors (also including Andre Royo and Linda Cardellini, squandered in bit parts), perhaps because he hasn’t decided on a tone, but perhaps loathing himself for lacking originality is his superpower. Gunn’s affinity for the material seems calculated yet unconsidered; for all its poses of splatter-flick irreverence, indie snark and occasional satirical moral reckoning, the movie is mostly about being unbalanced, and so it is.