steven@ism70.UUCP (11/27/84)
SUPERGIRL
Starring Helen Slater, Faye Dunaway and Hart Bochner.
Also starring Brenda Vaccaro, Peter Cook, Peter O'Toole and
Maureen Teefy.
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc. Written by David Odell. Produced by
Timothy Burrill.
Photographed by Alan Hume. Production Designed by Richard
MacDonald. Edited by Malcolm Cooke. Music by Jerry Goldsmith.
Visual Effects Supervision by Derek Meddings and Roy Field.
From Tri-Star Pictures. (1984)
If you're wondering whether or not this is any good, the answer is,
"It's no good." If you have any interest in the finer points and
ramifications of this, stick around.
This is deal moviemaking of the highest/lowest order. In this
movie, Simon Ward (you know, _S_i_m_o_n_ _W_a_r_d, the international star of
stage and screen) gets to have his name, his screen character's
name _a_n_d his picture on the poster when he only appears in seven
shots in the movie. The Salkinds (and co-conspirator Pierre
Spengler, who wisely chose to have his "Special thanks to" title
appended to the end of the end credits) have taken the low road
to sequelization the last three times out. Unlike Lucas, the
Salkinds haven't even tried to improve the product each time out.
They are content to deliver this shoddily made, half-baked
comic-book movie to the distributor and let them worry about
selling it.
The old adage in Hollywood is that when a movie is bad, the
screenwriter gets all the blame and when the movie is good, the
director is praised. Well, in _S_u_p_e_r_g_i_r_l, David Odell (The Dark
Crystal) and Szwarc (Jaws II) deserve equal amounts of
horselaughs for their ineptitude.
Most of the scenes have barely any wit to them and what could
have been amusing (given better direction) has been simply
trashed by Szwarc. There is a considerable amount of intercutting
between emotionally incongruous scenes, which destroys the impact
of each individual scene (for example, cutting between Slater as
Linda Lee dreamily thinking of hunk Hart Bochner while an
invisible shadow monster stolen from Forbidden Planet crunches
the scenery outside). Maybe Malcolm Cooke, the editor, thought
each scene would be boring if played by itself, so he decided to
make them confusing together.
Odell's idea of science fantasy adventure seems to be to throw
lots of made up terms at the audience (power of shadow, burundi
wand, omegahedron [note to Peter Reiher: I guess Odell didn't
think octahedron was a neat enough name], ad nauseum) in the
hopes of dazzling them with his imagination. Since none of these
objects or creatures is defined at all, the audience has no idea
of how horrible or wonderful these things are, and as a
consequence, there is very little suspense generated when Faye
Dunaway shakes a wooden stick with feathers and beads next to a
glowing glass billiard ball.
The plot of the film finds Kara (Helen Slater, who is only called
Supergirl three times in the film; do you smell a contractual
restriction here?) chasing the omegahedron from her world of Argo
to Earth. The omegahedron falls into the hands of the evil witch
Selena (Dunaway), who of course uses the awesome powers of this
mystical object to get a gardener (Bochner) to fall in love with
her. Adventure ensues when Bochner falls in love with Supergirl's
alterego Linda Lee. Plot holes are too numerous to mention, giving
the film the feeling that shots have been strung together without
narrative reason. Supergirl flys around monuments, she goes
undercover, she encounters rednecks just like Superman did: only
for no reason.
Slater looks great and is game for the role, but her performance
rises and falls throughout the film, probably because Szwarc
didn't give her any direction. Same with Bochner. O'Toole gives
his patented scenery chewing inflected readings -- always fun
("YOOUUU CCHHAAAAN do it, KHAAAARRAAA!"). Dunaway is sort of
irritating. Peter Cook and Brenda Vaccaro realize they have
nothing to do in the story except provide someone for Dunaway's
character to expound against, so they sort of stand there
stiffly. It's a living.
Cheap effects abound in this film, as do some very intrusive
product plugs (Tylenol, A&W, TWA). Next up for the Salkinds,
_S_a_n_t_a_ _C_l_a_u_s_ _T_h_e_ _M_o_v_i_e, advertised in the trades as the story of
"The Greatest Living Legend of All Time." Maybe Tri-Star will
pick that film up too, and double bill it with _S_i_l_e_n_t_ _N_i_g_h_t_,
_D_e_a_d_l_y_ _N_i_g_h_t.