Describing how Superman Returns goes awry makes one sound like they're just contradicting themselves. At once, Returns is a film that's too dour but also too goofy. It's got too little action for long stretches but what action we do get is pretty uninvolving. It's slavishly devoted to the original Christoper Reeve Superman films (complete with recreating the final shot of Superman II) yet struggles to understand what actually made those classic movies work. While those grievances may all sound like vague paradoxes, they're also all true. Superman Returns strives to be the kind of epic movie event that soars above all other blockbusters. Instead, it just falls to Earth. Hard.
