I did enjoy it. There are some really great things about it. But I kept feeling like it could have been better than it was. The NYTimes review also made me think. It has some finely-tuned criticisms. For example, it compared the film to the Passion of the Christ for the way it must beat up our hero savagely in order to achieve salvation.

It was much more angst-ridden than the 1978 film that is does so much to give homage to. Maybe this is part of my on-going puzzlement with how angst-ridden so much of our current art is?

Yet, I feel that the Superman of Superman II had a more realistic internal conflict than this one does. I will say that the some of the father-son moments, particularly between Jarel and Kalel, really got to me, for the obvious reasons that such things in even hokey films do for me.

The visual spectacles were sometimes sublime. And I loved the art direction's ambiguous mixing of the 30's and the present with such a timeless look.

2 1/2 film reels
4 popcorn kernels