uperman Returns has thrilling action, a romantic caped cheek-to-cheek flight, lingering Kal Penn close-ups and just one hench-desi line, something like ‘What are we gonna do?’ Mira Nair said last year:

“So by the time Namesake comes out next year, everyone will know Kal Penn, which will be great for us!” [Link]

Which with one line is quite unlikely. Penn conducts the first experiment with alien crystal at villain Lex Luthor’s behest. As in Poseidon, the brown man is promptly crushed by a falling object, par for Hollywood.

But we’ve seen it all before — this movie is a rehash of classic scenes in the earlier, better flicks, everything from the baby crash-landing on earth to the romantic flight with Margot Kidder to Kryptonite to Lex Luthor to the Fortress of Solitude. The only factor making it fresh is the decades in between. Kate Bosworth is shriller and less capable than the earlier Loises and never reaches the zenith attained by Teri Hatcher in TV’s Lois & Clark. Brandon Routh capably mimics Christopher Reeve, but never breaks out of pretty boy mold to make the role his own. Kevin Spacey plays a chatty, catty Lex Luthor with personality to spare.

S-Man 5, which reunites The Usual Suspects and X-Men director Bryan Singer with Spacey, is as loaded with Christian allegory as Narnia. For a god-man as powerful as Kal-El, the movie also deals in surprising amounts of repression and impotence; bullets and syringes are bent by Superman’s skin, but his romantic obsession can’t seem to cut him a break.

We saw the film at an IMAX dome in the Wadala area of Bombay, which was claustrophobic at first but soon as comfortable as a Pink Floyd laser show minus the herbiage. From outside, the dome looked like a large striped watermelon tilted 25 degrees from vertical. The curvature works well for panoramic Disneyland movies like America the Beautiful, not so well for feature films where you have to scan from side to side for detail. Today’s projection disappointed by chamfering the lower edges.

Where the movie delivers: the action; the ever-thrilling John Williams theme; the retro, Star Wars-influenced titling; the knight-savior fantasy; the softcore fantasy of the dark-haired, bespectacled hunk, a fantasy which I myopically encourage; Wendy Darling’s flight with Peter Pan above Manhattan’s light-filigreed river spans. Hrithik Roshan fills out a clown suit better, but against Krrish this isn’t even a stud race.

Also check out A. Lane and Sepia Mutiny.

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