Below The Beltway

Superman Returns opened and the reviews are pouring in.

Full coverage below the fold

Here’s the verdict from the Washington Post:

The much ballyhooed movie, far from great and far from short (2 1/2 hours!), is still great fun. Best is its love for the traditions of the Big Guy: It reaches out to embrace all the previous iterations of the caped flyboy, even finding room for Jack Larson and Noel Neill to get giant close-ups and dramatic scenes of the sort they never got in previous TV cameos. Neill, the ur-Lois Lane, plays a dying octogenarian who is swindled out of billions on her deathbed by Lex Luthor; and Larson, the ur-Jimmy Olsen, is a bartender who in a moment of stress actually hugs Sam Huntington, this movie’s Jimmy Olsen. It’s too bad George Reeves, the original TV tall-building leaper, isn’t around to bask in a little afterglow.

Even the late, great Marlon Brando is disinterred from the archives and called up to deliver a warning to his son, though it’s actually Lex and his minions who’ve penetrated the Fortress of Solitude and learn the lesson from Stanley Kowalski gone slumming in Richard Donner’s 1978 incarnation. And the movie uses as its overture John Williams’s blast of triumph that accompanied the big ’70s and ’80s versions, with additional music by John Ottman.

But the truly beloved figure of this trip to Metropolis is the late Christopher Reeve; he and his late wife, Dana, are the dedicatees at movie’s end. More to the point, the young actor Brandon Routh seems chosen for the part not because he embodies Superman but because he specifically embodies Reeve’s Superman, with dark good looks, a modest, even ego-less screen presence, a curiously muted sexuality and a sense of well-brought-up preppie’s politeness and diffidence. He’s a Superman who’d always call you Sir.

(…)

But the news is good. It’s a myth, not a miss. The bottom line is that Superman has returned and again, you will believe that a man can fly, and that virtue is its own reward.

Moriarity at Aint It Cool News has this to say:

SUPERMAN RETURNS may well kickstart a new SUPERMAN franchise for Warner Brothers. I have no doubt that Brandon Routh is the right guy for the tights. Throughout this film, he exudes a simple confidence that is exactly right for the character, specifically the way it was conceived for this ?requel? to the Donner films. I hope that the next film gives Superman an adversary worth his time, and that we get to see some full-on superheroics that remind us exactly why Superman is considered the most powerful hero in all of comic lore. As it is, this first film is a mixed bag. The script by Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris is, no doubt, exactly what Bryan Singer wanted it to be. I’m just not sure that it’s what I wanted to see as a fan. There are things to like, things to dislike, and some genuinely odd creative choices that left me conflicted about the film by the time the lights finally came up in the Steven J. Ross screening room last weekend.

And Chad Dotson was disappointed:

I?m going to revisit this review after I?ve had time to think about it, but my first reaction is disappointment. Director Bryan Singer laid an egg on this one. It was slow, and far too long (I can handle a movie being long if the director doesn?t just toss in forty minutes of filler to extend the picture, as Singer does here)?and Superman barely appears in the film.

Fellow AICN writer Quint has a different take.

And James Joyner was impressed but not overwhelmed:

Bryan Singer is an excellent director but his X-Men films were far superior to this one. The special effects were excellent, especially compared to the Christopher Reeve ?Superman? films, but nothing special in comparison to the X-Men, Spiderman, and Fantastic Four movies. The plot moved very slowly, with long setups for a rather mundane story.

The slow-moving plot is mentioned in several reviews. I was surprised to hear that the movie itself is 2 1/2 hours long, which seems long for a summer blockbuster.

The real question, of course, is whether people will fill the theaters this weekend and beyond and turn Superman into the summer blockbuster that Hollywood needs. That will determine whether this is the beginning of a new franchise, or an historical blip. I will probably see this movie myself this weekend, at which point I’ll share my own thoughts.

Meanwhile, in other superhero franchise news, the teaser trailer for Spiderman 3 was released along with the movie.