Superhero Movie

A decidedly generic, obvious spoof, Craig Mazin's SUPERHERO MOVIE essentially strings together scenes from other movies, reconceived as fart and sex jokes. All the gags suffer from overkill; for example, when a flashback shows little Rick and his parents attacked by criminals, the child doesn't just witness mom and dad's deaths, as in Batman Begins -- instead, he accidentally shoots them dead himself. When, as in The X-Men, he visits Dr. Xavier's "School for the Non-Asian Gifted," he sees an assortment of "mutants," ranging from a 'roid-raged Barry Bonds (Sean Simms) to a big-bosomed (but frankly tired-looking) Invisible Woman (Pamela Anderson). And when his aunt dies, his uncle doesn't just mourn her -- he tries to hump her corpse in the coffin.

It may be that the golden age for spoofs is over. With The Daily Show making fun of the news and every movie genre skewered at least once already, the concept is too familiar to be funny or very insightful, especially when the jokes hover around bathroom accidents. But it may also be that too many recent spoofs have been lazy and cheap, and that another, more intelligent effort --along the lines of Scream -- could attract a current audience and have something to say about that audience's culture as well. This, however, is not that movie.