What a disappointment. Well, not really, since I wasn't expecting all that much. Despite Bryan Singer. Despite the intriguing story basis. This is a movie, after all, about the Man of Steel. So quintessentially boring that the most interesting thing done with his character in at least twenty years... was to have him die. (Which DC promptly ruined by resurrecting him.)

To be fair, I have only seen bits and pieces of the Christopher Reeves' Superman. Maybe I am missing some critical ambiance due to my have been raised in a time vault. For me, it was just strange to see that the new actor was such a look-alike to Reeves'. And the unnecessary, obvious, distracting, and bizarre manipulations of the color palette were simply ... well, obvious, unnecessary, bizarre and utterly distracting. Why make a new movie look like an 80's (or earlier?) one?

Another thing I didn't like were the close-up shots of the computer generated Superman flying around. Why did anyone think it would be a good idea to distract the viewer from the movie by putting jarringly not-quite-real pictures in the middle of random scenes throughout the movie?

Blah.

That's it for the nitty gritty stupid pointless crankiness. Now onto the real problem with this movie.

T   h   e     p   a   c   i   n   g  . (more in a moment...)

The background story, that Supes has been away for the last five years and the world has moved on without him, is great. I really like the concept of him having to find his place all over again in a changed world. Although... now that I think about it, that's not -quite- what happened... but what ever. I'll give a thumbs up for this.

     The pacing is too glacial. (more in a moment...)

The acting was quite restrained. Practically subtle at times. I quite liked it. I would have liked longer interactions between Lois Lane, Clark Kent, the kid (I forgot his name?), and Lois' fiancee. Instead I got long...

...boring...

     ...scenes...


          ...of flying...

(okay, back to the pacing) What the heck? Is this "Meet Joe Black"? Or perhaps "The Horse Whisperer"? I thought I was going to see either an action movie with a caped flying super hero or a talky relationship movie with a caped flying super hero... or perhaps best of all, some mixture of the two. Instead... each event is separated by chunks of non-action, non-talky stuff. It bores.

The really big disappointment here for me was that the guy who made "X-Men", which I totally dig, left that franchise to make this movie. Because he left, someone else was left to carry on. And they made a mess out of it. I would forgive Singer X-3 if Superman Returns had been good. But it wasn't.

Until they (whoever that is) decides to make movies with the characters from the "Smallville" TV series, they should retrieve Doomsday and repeat the events of Superman #75... that is to say, kill Superman... and let him Rest In Peace this time.

Recommended: No

Movie Mood: Die-hard Fans Only
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Pacing