My Super Ex-Girlfriend manages to do what the recent crop of crime fighters haven't: show us how much fun it might be to fly, or have super strength, or look buff in spandex.
The two starring performances are spot on. Wilson gets the tone that screenwriter Don Payne so expertly evokes: It's a weird sort of self-aware despicability...Thurman is beautiful, fearless and perfectly believable as a superhero.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend: 7 out of 10: Director Ivan Reitman hasn't had a great film since Ghostbusters. In fact for such a big name in Hollywood he has had only two great films (Ghostbusters and Stripes both over twenty years ago), one decent film (Dave), some quite mediocre films (Legal Eagle, Six Days Seven Nights, Junior, Kindergarten Cop, and Evolution) and some very serious flops(Fathers Day, Ghostbusters 2).
So needless to say with that track record I expected a high concept comedy such as My Super Ex-Girlfriend to be mediocre at best. Instead it hung in tight at decent.
The film had two personal aces in its corner with me. I like Uma Thurman and I just saw Superman Returns.
The fact I had recently sat through two and a half hours of Superman stalking Lois Lane admittedly greatly added to the humor of this film. The main character actually seems to enjoy her super powers and this movie ironically is one of the more realistic demonstrations of how a mortal given superpowers would act. (Compare to the whining Jessica Alba lays on in Fantastic Four or the angst the X-men feel about not fitting in. If I could fly and shoot fireballs I assure you I would fit in. Hell I would be the center of bloody attention.)
Some superheroes are designed to be dour types (Batman and the Punisher come to mind) but most come across like whining athletes. Thurman is clearly enjoying herself. Uma Thurman fits the role to a tee. In fact all the actors do a great job with special kudos to Anna Faris as the other woman.
Sure some of the gags are juvenile and the movie really could have used an R-rating but when I get to see a super heroine throw a great white shark into the apartment of her rival I feel nothing but pure joy.
It certainly beats some male model in a superman cape moping out side of Lois's house spying with his x-ray vision pretending to be Jesus.
If it weren't for Uma this might have been a horrible movie, but she was just great. In fact, the entire cast was great. The movie was just kind of decent. Nothing great, but still good enough to enjoy.
Confusing gender issues like the ones dredged up in Ex-Girlfriend call to mind another Reitman dud, the pregnant-Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy "Junior," and the sophistication level has only slightly improved since then.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend was written by longtime "Simpsons" scribe Don Payne, but you wouldn't know that based on the finished film, which lacks the intelligence and sly wit that has kept Homer and the gang on the air for all these years.
It has its charms aplenty, and a cast that works to surprising efficiency, but the humor is only sporadically funny and the script is too conventional to add any real spark to the film.
There are some pretty funny moments during the movie but they don't last too long and I think what really lets it down is the fact that it seemed very predictable. It just seemed a bit TOO daft to me and the ending was a little cheesy too, perhaps. I thought that the movie was alright but they maybe tried a bit too hard to make a movie based on a rather short story. I think it may have worked better if, instead of making it clear from the movie title that she gets dumped, instead that came as a surprise and wasn't obvious, then it might have been funnier as people wouldn't expect to see what happened. As it is, it seemed a bit too obvious I suppose. There definately are some funny moments but their a bit too fleeting and I felt as if the movie almost took itself too seriously. Knowing that this movie is an Ivan Reitman movie, I suppose I felt I expected something a bit more, substantial I suppose, or at least less mediocre.
However, one other character, other than Eddie's, that I quite liked, was Hannah Lewis, a workmate of Matts that G-Girl got jealous towards Matt about, thinking that he was also seeing her behind her back (which he wasn't, at the time). Hannah is played by Anna Faris, who I like as an actress from the Scary Movie movies, she has good facial expressions, if you know what I mean. Her and Eddie as professor Bedlam (or Barry as his real name is, who, as it turns out, is actually G-Girls old ex school friend) make it a slightly more interesting movie as their characters I thought were pretty good. Luke is, as always, a good actor and does fine in this movie, though I thought that there wasn't a great deal particularly to like about his character, I suppose we're supposed to feel sorry for him as he seems to be quite a shy guy that doesn't really know how to do handle relationships or certainly get out of them well. The way he dumps her though, I say he got what he deserved *hah* I guess maybe im being a bit unfair on this movie, it is certainly entertaining enough to keep teens (which I guess its mainly targeted at/for) quiet for the hour and a half it lasts but its just nothing all THAT great really, I felt that we watch the movie already knowing too much of the story and that kind of spoils it in a sense. It certainly isn't the kind of movie that I would want to watch many times, if again at all really, so I'd recommend you either rent this or get it on pay per view but don't bother buying it.
Wow, these filmmakers really know how to punch us in the face, don't they? This movie offers you absolutely nothing, boasting a solid cast and a terrible, terrible script that possesses lame jokes that are more depressing than funny.