Superman stands for truth and justice with an honest demeanor and a selfless attitude. His cousin, Kara, is just the opposite, running from her problems and drinking her sorrows away. But when her dog Krypto is left on the brink of death, she must step up to the occasion, racing against time, aligning herself with a young girl out for revenge, and crossing paths with bounty hunter Lobo along the way.
DC Comics ended their prior attempt at a cinematic universe, the DCEU, in favor the DCU, which started with David Corenswet’s Superman film, directed by James Gunn, last year, following mixed critical reception to the previous attempts to build a cinematic universe around these characters. SUPERGIRL, the second installment, has a brilliant leading lady who steals the show, but she’s unfortunately surrounded by superhero and comic book cliches and an inconsistent tone. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… mediocre at best, even if not a total loss.
Where I’ll give SUPERGIRL all the credit in the world is the casting of Milly Alcock as the title character. She’s the complete opposite of Superman, constantly hungover and trying to run from her problems and past troubles. This makes for some interesting, and at times, hilarious scenes. The movie does the best it can, diving into her past while showing her troubled present. The “hero’s journey” is nothing new in the world of entertainment, but she has an undeniable charisma and runs the gamut from lighthearted humor to a tortured soul.
Sadly, other aspects of the movie just don’t hold up as well. The biggest problem is that SUPERGIRL feels like a million other movies we’ve seen before. The atmosphere, including the settings and characters, invokes flashbacks to the superior Marvel GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY moves (not really a surprise given that James Gunn produced this film and directed its immediate predecessor in the DCU), and the characters and plot points are cliches we’ve seen a million times. The race against time? Check. The young person out for revenge who wants to go along with the hero? Check. A character being given the lecture on how revenge will consume them? Check. A character who has the opportunity to kill off their nemesis, and is pleaded with by another hero to show mercy? Check. SUPERGIRL invokes nostalgia, and not in the best of ways either. Every element of this movie, you’ve seen somewhere else, done better.
The other weight weighing SUPERGIRL down and stopping the film from taking flight is its inconsistent tone. The majority of the movie features a drunken Kara trying to live her life and escape her problems, with results that are laugh-out-loud funny on more than a few occasions. The movie handles the drama of Kara’s origin well at times, including flashbacks to the tragedies on Krypton that resulted in her coming to Earth… but the melodrama here feels starkly out of the place when juxtaposed against what most of the movie is. These scenes, good as they are, feel like they belong in a different movie.
The other issue, and it’s a fairly common one with comic book and superhero movies, is that the filmmakers simply can’t resist going for the big third-act action packed finale. This could’ve been a smaller, more intimate finish for our heroes, but instead bombastic explosions and an overstuffed battle take the stage. I also question whether the film needed the character of Lobo (played by Jason Momoa, who’d played Aquaman in the earlier DCEU), who ends up feeling more like a distraction (albeit an entertaining one) than an essential plot point.
Reviews have been mixed for SUPERGIRL across the board. Milly Alcock has found the role she was born to play, and has a field day from start to finish. But overused cinematic cliches, uninteresting supporting characters, tonal inconsistencies, and a mindless final battle that undermine much of what came before don’t do the movie any favors. I can’t quite recommend SUPERGIRL, but it’ll at least make a decent weekend rental when it hits the streaming services.