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My Super Ex-Girlfriend By Harry Forbes Catholic News Service NEW YORK (CNS) -- Superman's bittersweet celluloid romance with Lois Lane is all very touching, but what if an affair with a superhero suddenly went sour? "Hell hath no fury like a superwoman scorned" is the major premise of "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" (Fox). One day after work on the subway, a lovelorn New York architect Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) -- at the urging of his would-be Lothario friend Vaughn Haige (Rainn Wilson) -- asks a bespectacled art gallery assistant Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) out on a date. She refuses, but when her bag is snatched by a thief, Matt's valiant efforts to retrieve it win her over, and she relents. Matt has no idea that underneath the prim but stylish exterior, she is super heroine G-Girl (her powers much the same as Superman's), though when their romance ignites, she reveals her secret. Their physical relationship becomes more wearying than satisfying to Matt, and at one point includes an airborne encounter. (There's no nudity in any of these scenes, though they still seem out of place in a PG-13 comic-book comedy.) Meanwhile there's archvillain Professor Bedlam (Eddie Izzard), who has reasons of his own for breaking up the romance -- he and Jenny had been high school sweethearts -- and ridding her of her superpowers. The romance prospers despite his efforts, that is, until Jenny becomes unaccountably jealous of Matt's officemate, Hannah (Anna Faris), whose relationship with Matt is, at least initially, platonic. Jenny's jealousy soon turns to rage when she misinterprets an innocent embrace between Matt and Hannah. When Matt attempts to end the relationship with Jenny, she unleashes her considerable powers to wreak havoc on him and his new love. The most diabolical of her devices is to throw a large, ravenous shark through Matt's window. Ivan Reitman directs with the requisite light touch, the colorful film looks good, and the leads are quite engaging (Thurman and Wilson being likable and accomplished farceurs), but too much of Don Payne's dialogue is witless, and many of the gags are needlessly vulgar, with the situations less genuinely funny than they could have been. Wanda Sykes adds some sass as Matt's boss, but Wilson's Vaughn character is annoyingly (if intentionally) obnoxious, and the source of some of the more offensive lines in the film. As with so many current films, though the denouement wraps things up in a satisfyingly moral way, this doesn't erase the sophomoric emphasis on sex, and the sporadically crude humor, which will render the film unsuitable for many. The film contains nongraphic premarital sexual situations, brief rear nudity elsewhere, crude language, crass expressions, some profanity, mild action violence and some sexist remarks. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 -- parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. - - - Forbes is director of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. For more reviews, go to www.usccb.org/movies. END Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed. CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250 |
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