Super: No, Actually It's Very Average

Super is a very confusing movie.  It suffers from dramatic switches in tone, that left me confused on how to feel about the characters and what happens to them.

Rainn Wilson plays Frank, whose ex-junkie wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him when she relapses and returns to her drug dealer Jacques (Kevin Bacon).  This causes Frank to have a mental breakdown and he decides to don a superhero outfit to fight crime as the Crimson Bolt.  Rainn Wilson is actually pretty good as a leading man.  Unfortunately he isn't given anything really interesting to do at the start of the movie but to mope around like a sad sack.  Seeing a guy beat people up with a wrench just wasn't doing it for me.

The movie really picks up when Ellen Page really enters.  She plays a comic book store clerk, who discovers that Frank is the Crimson Bolt.  She requests to join Frank with his crusade on crime.  She joins him as Boltie, the Crimson Bolt's sidekick.  The movie then becomes really fun and entertaining here, with Ellen Page really energizing the action on screen.  She plays a character that is different from the Ellen Page I normally see.  She plays a hyper, manic idiot character rather than her usual wise-cracking smart-ass.

Unfortunately Ellen Page isn't enough for this movie to overcome its issues.  The tone switching (drama, comedy, farce, dark comedy) left me confused as to how to feel or care at the end.

** of 4 stars.

Breaking In: Really Bad

Being obsessed with TV can be a bad thing.  I decided to check out Fox's newest show "Breaking In".  It is the new Christian Slater show. I think it was trying to be a comedy, but nothing about it was funny at all.  Slater's mugging for the camera was incredibly grating.  I don't understand how Slater keeps getting new work.  The main character is an repulsive bore.  The black character's eccentricity is mind numbing.  Even the hot girl, the safe cracker of the group is made unlikable by her choice in boyfriend.

The show seems to think that making characters wacky is funny, unfortunately it isn't.  The characters are so wacky that it makes it hard to believe that they are competent at their job at breaking into buildings.  I was so disappointed in the show I was on the verge of stopping it halfway through.  There was nothing redeeming about this show.