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★★
Directed by: Wesley Wittkamper
Written by: Wesley Wittkamper, Jeff Gass
Starring: Ric Borelli, Lisa Guerrero Coles, Mark Staten, Dan Thiel, Paul Bynum, Kevin Glikmann
An evil supervillain is planning to take over the world and it is up to a team of superheroes to stop him.
In Los Angeles, a group of superheroes are doing what they do best: keeping people safe. Some of them are Superbman (Borelli), Wonderful Woman (Coles), Ratman (Staten) and Aguaman (Bynum). Then there is trouble as Bob, a supervillain, arrives from the fifth dimension and wants to rule the globe. He recruits supervillains and proceeds to set his plans in motion and capturing the superheroes.
Just to be clear, this feature was filmed on a very small budget, therefore one should not expect spectacular special effects, buildings being destroyed etc. There is hardly any action here, let alone fight scenes. This is a comedy, that relies on humour in order to be entertaining. It was shot in the nineties and it is now having its commercial debut on Amazon UK Prime. This is due to the fact that the negatives and hard drives were destroyed in a fire. Two decades later an early output on VHS was found and it is now being released.
As mentioned, the budget was quite limited, so the picture quality is not good and neither is the audio. Regarding the sound, the plus side is that there are interesting sound effects like the ones utilized in the Batman live action series of the sixties. The editing is creative at certain points, utilizing wipe techniques and title cards for the introduction of some characters. Looking at the effects, they do not look great. There are scenes that show the heroes flying by themselves in the sky or swimming underwater and they are not convincing, to say the least. It looks like the figure of a character was cut out from a picture and was edited onto the screen. This is not a movie that should be taken seriously.
As far as the screenplay goes, the heroes spend the majority of the film doing what everyday people do: they socialize, talk about their personal issues and a significant amount of time is dedicated to the relationship between Superbman and Wonderful Woman. Generally, they are not shown fighting criminals. On the other hand, the bad guys do what bad guys do: they brag about how evil they are and attempt to make their bad intentions a reality. The dialogue is filled with jokes and adult humour and there are scenes of a sexual nature.
Both heroes and antiheroes are portrayed as silly individuals, who cannot be taken seriously. This is not a serious film and the poor acting does not do much damage in that respect. Glikmann is the one who steals the show, with his over-the-top performance as the leader of the supervillains. Constantly grinning, telling everybody who dangerous he is and with a menacing look in his eyes, he is a pleasure to watch.
The costumes look cheap, which is fair enough, considering the budget and some of them resemble the ones worn by famous characters, such as Wonder Woman, Batman and Aquaman.
This movie is a satire on Superhero films. It is poorly made, but it was made just for laughs. It is leave-your-brain-at-the-door fun. Whether it will entertain because of its jokes, or absurd characters, or ridiculous script, or unimpressive special effects, will depend on the viewer. Or it might not entertain at all.
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