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Superhero Movie

Relentless sadism and farts

By JASON O'BRYAN | April 2, 2008

1.0 Stars

PLAIN BAD: Even the real Spider-Man cannot save you.

Superhero Movie is more enjoyable than Epic Movie — but then, so is getting stabbed in the chest. Taking almost exclusively from Spider-Man, the story follows the toad-faced Rick Riker (Drake Bell) as he is bitten by a radioactive dragonfly, summarily gets superpowers, and tries to defeat the evil Hourglass (Christopher McDonald) and become a hero. Zany exploits follow. Writer/director Craig Mazin and producer David Zucker aim for Airplane!-esque joke-a-minute absurdity but come up with a relentless mix of sadism and farts. At 85 minutes (and that includes 15 minutes of outtakes at the end), this movie feels as if it had been written in an afternoon, and without so much as a cursory check as to whether the jokes were funny. There are some chuckles — okay, two — but the film’s big accomplishment is that it elevates the “spoof” genre from ludicrously awful to just plain bad. 85 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Circle/Chestnut Hill + suburbs

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