I expected this to be predictable rubbish but I was wrong as it is surprisingly good as superhero spoofs go – funny, intelligent, well-scripted and playing characters very against formula.
Uma Thurman is Jenny Johnson aka - G-Girl, or Supergirl in all but name, but she is also a basket case comparable to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction Bunny Burner mode which is what gives the film a darker edge that stops it drowning in sentimentality.
The story is straight forward enough. G-Girl was created when a girl touches a radioactive meteorite and instantly gains major super-powers. She abandons all interest in her adoring boyfriend, Barry (Professor) Bedlam, played superbly by Eddie Izzard. He becomes embittered and resorts to villainy mainly to attract her back to him, as he can’t stand life without her. He is not the laugh like a drain, manic villain, nor does he have any powers. He is just a rather impotent sad figure who wishes things could be better and actually therefore becomes highly interesting. As Jenny, (avoid partners with alliterative names being the theme of the film) G-Girl falls for Luke Wilson’s Matt Saunders character when he beats her to a hoodlum who tries to steal her handbag.
Matt realises that his girlfriend is odd, in that she keeps running out on him (saving the world), and when they make love, the bed literally bounces round the room cracking the walls. When she is run over by a car but unscathed., he realises who she is, and actually becomes frightened by her a little as he wants a regular girl. In fact, he already has a thing for Hannah Lewis, (Anna Paris) with who he works. He dumps G-Girl for the normal girl, and G-Girl goes ballistic. She head butts his fridge through a wall, trashes his flat, shows him through a telescope how she has pushed his car into orbit round the Earth, uses her heat vision to burn the word ‘dick’ into his scalp, strips him naked at a work board meeting at high speed which gets him fired, and when she sees him making love to Anna Paris she throws a live great white shark into the bedroom with them, twenty storeys up a skyscraper. (Definitely the funniest scene in the film).
Luke Wilson has some unexpected support from Prof. Bedlam, who has already nearly killed him by dropping him off the statue of liberty to attract G-Girl.
Bedlam now reveals his plan. He has a piece of the meteorite that gave G-Girl her powers. He knows that to touch it again will drain her power. It won’t kill her, just make her human again. Wilson tries to rekindle his old romance (jeopardising his true love) to help Bedlam, who has another agenda, in that the next person to touch the rock will inherit the powers which he wants for himself so he can impress Thurman and make her his. It all goes pear shaped for him in that when G-Girl touches the rock, losing her powers, it is Paris and G-Girl together who then get the powers back again, and then start a super-heroine cat fight across New York (like a low budget take on the spectacle of Superman Two) – he ending is actually neat. Wilson ends up catching up with them as they destroy a modelling catwalk platform. He begs them to stop and they do. He tells each of them how he feels and tells G-Girl that she has one man who really loves her and who is even prepared to destroy the world to prove it – He now forces the bashful Dr Bedlam to seize the chance to show his true affection as a normal man, which he does. Wilson now has freedom to take the girl he really loves for himself. The four of them are admiring Wilson’s car, which G-Girl has brought down from orbit (all burnt up from re-entry) when the heroines discover an emergency and fly off together (‘Thos could involve some heavy lifting G-Girl says) leaving the men holding their handbags. The men decide to get a beer and wait. END – Very funny – worth seeing for the shark scene alone, but actually an unexpected little gem of a film.
Arthur Chappell
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