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USA 2006
Director: Ivan Reitman
Cast: Uma Thurman, Luke Wilson, Anna Faris, Rainn Wilson, Wanda Sykes, Eddie Izzard
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: 21 July 2006
Running Time: 1 hour 33 minutes
The Movie Review
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| MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND |
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Anything could be made as a joke, or more precisely humor could be made out of almost anything. And concerning superheroes, there are abundant jokes, words or images, naughty or clean, about superheroes in the Internet. And filling the comedy realm with a romantic film taking up a theme of superhero is more than welcome. There are many superhero movies with potentially good love relationship but abandoned for the sake of limiting the running time--except for TV series which have figuratively unlimited minutes--and of course for staying true to the initial premise of Superhero-saves-the-world agenda.
I don't know about fellow moviegoers out there, but it was very challenging for me to take my girlfriend to see a superhero flick, funny thing is, when My Super Ex-Girlfriend comes to town, I was persistent not to watch it. But girl, did I wrong.
Matt Saunders a regular office worker, one day after being provoked by his friend, Vaughn, is making a move on a hot girl on the train. Unbeknownst to them the cute girl with the glasses is The G-Girl (Uma Thurman), the famous superheroine who often saves the city. The two of them finally get along very well and G-Girl is totally in love with him. But Matt (Luke Wilson) realizes that he actually falls in love with his co-worker Hannah Lewis (Anna Faris), plus Matt just can't stand the jealousy and crazy infatuation of Jenny Johnson (G-Girl). Poor G-Girl, her heart is broken, and what a poor man Matt would be for messing around with a superhero. And now G-Girl, who's taking a break from saving the city, makes use of her superpower to break Matt's everything. What will happen to Matt Saunders? And will G-Girl finally get over him?
Ivan Reitman really knows how to make a fun and amusing film and the credit should also go to Don Payne as the writer. The premise of MSEG is very promising, and thankfully that the script is pretty much clever most of the time and the dialogue between Luke Wilson and Uma Thurman is just cute and reasonable for a case where a neurotic Superheroine dates an ordinary guy. All of that good things do have an exception with Rainn Wilson's character Vaughn Haige, which is not only that his sole purpose is to serve as "best friend who gives awful advice" but his appearance at the scene before the fight scene (between G-Girl and her rival) is so awfully forced and cheap.
Even though three years have passed since Kill Bill slashing the theater with its astonishing splatter-fest, Uma Thurman's charm in my memory is still as fresh as if I just saw Kill Bill yesterday. And casting her to fill in the role of female superhero is not something of a shock to me. But even in this romantic flick, she could put on one heckuva girl-madly-in-love character to the max. G-Girl is a geeky girl who seldom dates and acts awkward in front of a man she likes, just like a teenager who has just recently hits her puberty. But when G-Girl's mating instinct is tickled, she would pounce, and Uma, once again, plays G-Girl in all her behaviors perfectly. And putting Luke Wilson as the main protagonist and the main victim (in the pleasure way) is just perfect. He could portray a likable man who doesn't have any bad intention of taking advantage of the situation. Their chemistry is what we suppose to see from a romantic movie.
The flaw comes mainly from technical aspect, which of course the abusive use of CGI. I realize that Superhero-themed movies are indeed relying on Computer Generated Imagery. But the ones in MSEG are something that could not be said as excellent. I do enjoy the concept of Shark in the city, that scene is shockingly fun and hilarious, especially when the shark targets its teeth to Matt's "thing". However, when the movie starts showing the scene where the girls are engaging in a catfight, it is not something very amusing. Because instead of prolong or add more minutes for the real actresses to engage in a physical fight, it quickly resorts to CGI, and what an artificial set of colours that the girls have, thus giving the instant feel of cartoon-like. The physical fight that we got is not that interesting, it doesn't have to be brutal (that's not the fun the audience likely to expect from MSEG), but at least a fun-like girl fight.
In June-July 2006, those recent weeks alone, I have witnessed the tragedy of comedy romantic-wannabe from movies such as You, Me and Dupree and John Tucker Must Die (although the latter still stays true to the term comedy compared to You, Me and Dupree). And so I was reluctant upon buying the tickets, except for two main reasons. The first was for knowing that Ivan Reitman was the one in the director chair, since I like his light and fun movie called Evolution in 2001 and the cheesy-shocking-fun of Cannibal Girls in 1973. And the second was for knowing Uma Thurman is headlining the movie. Uma still mesmerizes me every time I remember her performance in the 1998 Les Misérables. Even though she has appeared before in the real Superhero movie Batman & Robin in 1997 (as Poison Ivy) which by the way the movie was a real disappointment. Gladly to say, I wasn't anything but sorry to have watched this comedy movie, My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a pretty fun movie with good chemistry between the lead actor and actress. For male moviegoers, watching MSEG with your male friends would be wrong, but with your girlfriend, would probably be nicely thanked afterwards, at least in my case ;-)
My Super Ex-girlfriend is an excellent date movie. It's a movie where the term Woman-on-top rings true figuratively and literally.
© iwan pranowo of Movielogy.com
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