Ten Statements About....THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN INVINCIBLE (1984)

The second our President (Michael Pate) sings a song
composed of the word 'bullshit' repeated ad infinitum....
you know this isn't just any super-hero movie.

Long before the Age of Reason

Evil waged unholy treason.

Believe me that no mother ever cried for Midnight."

1) So help me, I am so a sucker for mock newsreel footage. Yes, there's a certain arch tone to the opening sequence that provides us with Captain Invincible's backstory. But there's also--thanks primarily to Alan Arkin--a great deal of fun, and it's hard not to imagine how he'd do in an actual pulp adventure film.

2) This is, of course, another insane film by the insane filmmaker Phillipe Mora--and as such, we have to accept that certain things will be somewhat fluid....like simple continuity (part of Christopher Lee's scheme is to drive ethnics into ghetto communities--one of which is called 'Sicilian Heights' on the sign outside, and is refered to as 'Sicilian Villa' by the salesman, for example...and that's in the first fifteen minutes).

3) Given that Michael Pate plays the President in both this film and The Howling III: The Marsupials, I have to wonder if Mora actually has his own little universe where all these mad musings of his mind gambol together. But then, if we accept that, we have to accept that in Mora's mind the President is inclined to go into a song and dance number where he repeats the word 'bullshit' about fifty times....

I did mention this is a musical, didn't I?

Dracula sings!  Fu Manchu dances!  Sherlock Holmes...
enjoys the hell of out himself?

4) Of the ten musical numbers, many of which seem to ape different American musical genres, three are the last known songs by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley. And boy, do they stand out....particularly the song for Christopher Lee's Mr. Midnight, 'Choose Your Poison,' and the defacto duet of Lee and Arkin, 'Midnight.' Especially after some really rough patches, those songs give the film a jolt of energy.

5) Kate Fitzpatrick, who plays the female lead Patty, is truly dreadful. She frequently resorts to the broadest sort of pantomime to convey what she needs to (like bugging her eyes and grasping her throat to indicate she's suffocating), and actually detracts from Arkin's rather good all-in performance.

6) This film would simply not have worked without the performances of Arkin and Lee, who dive right in and approach their characters absolutely seriously. In a movie filled with caricatures and buffonery, these two actors make sure the immortal enemies Invincible and Midnight are throughly believable...and that keeps the film from sliding headlong into total and absolute nonsense.

7) I really have no idea what's going on in the sequence where it's hinted that we're about to learn Mr. Midnight's evil plan. Why is everything in Keystone Kops speed? Why is that strange monster that serves as Midnight's sidekick romping with black-lingerie clad girls? What. The. Fuck?

...and this is not the most undignified thing Phillipe Mora
asks Alan Arkin to do....

But then...it is a Phillipe Mora film and, as such, bugfuck insane.

8) It's not just that 'Choose Your Poison' is the kind of song that only O'Brien and Hartley could write, with its twisting lyrics that weave in an amazing number of alcohol and cocktail references into it....it's that Christopher Lee delivers it with such overwhelming glee. He seems to actively be having the time of his life singing and dancing in this number, and his enthusiasm is transfered to the audience.

9) With Midnight's scheme of driving all ethnic peoples off Manhattan Island and sending them afloat, I have to think that Mora thought he was doing a satire on the then still fresh in people's minds Superman films...but what interests me is how I am sure this film was an inspiration--unintentional or not--to Albert Pyun's godawful Captain America film, with its boy who worships the hero growing up to be President and asking the help of said hero many years later to stop a maniacal, fascist madman....

10) As bad as this film is in spots, it's impossible to hate something so unafraid of its own corniness as to have its hero inspired by such icons as FDR and--in the climax--Kate Smith (who apparently gave Mora permission to use her famous 1933 recording of 'America The Beautiful').

Overall...a true oddity--how many super-hero musical comedies are there in the world, let alone ones starring Adam Arkin and Christopher Lee?--that makes up for its moments of bad taste and mediocrity with the trademark Phillipe Mora nuttiness and some central performances that manages to pull this film together by sheer force of will.

Ten Statements About....SUPER (2010)

Let's be honest...this is the only thing about this film most
of you are interested in...

"Look what happened to you when you don't have a kid sidekick! You get shot by people!"

1) Maybe it's because my previous exposure to Rainn Wilson has only been when he was playing that grotesque on The Office, but I was struck here by how much more nuanced an actor he was. Throughout the first act, there's such a well-meaning patheticness to Wilson's Frank that speaks volumes about the desperation of his life. There's echoes of Dwight in his performance (an argument could be made that Frank is Dwight in the real world), but it's shorn of the broad artifice.

2) That being said, I have to wonder if this film isn't damaged by its super-hero-in-the-real-world angle. Once Frank puts on the costume of the Crimson Bolt and starts wacking people with a pipe wrench, the film loses focus for large portions of the second and third acts. Especially jarring are the moment where the darkness that infuses most of the comedy sloughs off in favor of goofiness with Wilson struggling to change in a car and playing secret identity games with him boss. The costume is the biggest thing that blurs the trajectory of Frank's character arc.

After being let go in the 80's, the Domino Noid struggled with
his identity....

3) Luckily, we have Ellen Page's thoroughly insane performance as Libby, who forces herself into the role of Frank's sidekick 'Boltie.' Spastic, energetic, and demented on every level (her laugh, which is calculatedly too manic to be natural, practically becomes an element of the score), Page gives that portion of the film a jolt, while also providing a much needed contrast to Wilson's underplaying.

(And yeah...Page's costume is hideous in concept....but the way she fills it out is anything but...)

4) While James Gunn has done some good films as a writer and director, he seems to have problems here maintaining a consistent tone. The first act is strictly indie comedy....then it veers into farce, then black comedy, then gory action thriller before finally discovering his its path back to the indie comedy it's finally revealed as being. Gunn really needs to have more control over his projects, as the sliding around from tone to tone, from genre to genre, makes the film narratively murky.

5) ...and adding to that murkiness is the quirky touches Gunn uses sometimes, like the imposition of comic art elements to key moments. That wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't done so arbitrarily. I can certainly understand the usage of comic sound effect elements during the fight scenes, but filling the screen with 'bombs' in different comic letters when Wilson says the word makes no sense.

6) Look, I know I once said I wanted to see Nathan Fillion playing Green Lantern, but after seeing him filling that yellow Holy Avenger costume like an overstuffed sausage, the opening in his mask emphasizing his double chin....I rescind that statement.

"And this is for badmouthing Steve Carrell!"

7) As Frank's, ummmm, nemesis, Kevin Bacon's Jacques is pretty damn cool. Bacon chooses to play the drug dealer not as a villain, but as a regular workaday guy. Almost all of his mayhem is executed by the people around him (headed by Michael Rooker), and he actually tries to reason with Frank at several points in the film. What that does is make his descent in the climax to a full-on murderous thug all the more impactful.

8) I almost wish we got to see more of John Elway lookalike Gregg Henry's Detective Felkner. His performance seems to hint at something more going on inside the guy's head, and his early exit from the film at the hands of Michael Rooker's Abe and his henchmen robs the film of its opportunity to do its take on the comic book trope of the policeman rival....

9) You know--and I think I blame Gunn's script for this, although it could also be my perceiving a chemistry between the actors--Linda Cardillini has a very small role as a Pet Store Employee who tries to sell Frank a pet rabbit that seemed to indicate she would have a slightly larger role. And yet she doesn't appear again, and I'm sorry that's so especially in light of how the rabbit plays a part in the film's coda.

10) I continue to be struck about how Liv Tyler--who plays Frank's wife Sarah, the character who unintentionally is the center of the story--has grown into her face finally. She's shaken off the creepy Steve Tyler-esque cast to her features, and is now just an attractive woman who is a competent actress.

Overall...while there is loads to like in this film, Gunn's script comes off as narratively ADD and could have been more successful if he didn't impose his comic book obsession on it. There are some great performances, especially from Wilson and Page, and if you're interested in some of these actors, you might want to give it a look.