Someone from outer space, spying on our pop culture, might conclude that our gods du jour are a handsome boy with a perfect curl and a silver-haired ice queen. The striking physogs of Superman (Brandon Routh) and the Devil Who Wears Prada (Meryl Streep) are billboarded everywhere, inviting, by their juxtaposition, some subliminal thoughts about the nature of male and female power in the movies.
Director Brian Singer abandoned his onetime favorite godlets in the X-Men franchise to resurrect the Man of Steel in the form of Routh, who dreamed of succeeding the late Christopher Reeve even while laboring in the salt mines of soap opera. Singer lathers on myth with a trowel in his "Superman Returns," turning a cool brother from another planet into God's gift to humankind.
In the new film, Superman returns from his five-year sojourn in the "graveyard" of what used to be his home planet, Krypton, to be greeted lovingly by madonna stepmom (Eva Marie Saint) and indifferently by Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth), now a mommy herself, happily shacked up with a really nice guy. Singer's Superman never really explains what the point of his trip to Krypton's "tomb" was all about. But it's sure drained him of that self-deprecating sense of humor and charm with which Reeve's Superman won our hearts in the 1978 movie. This fellow's nice enough, but a bit leaden and opaque, like a supermodel not quite able to animate his too-perfect looks.
The returned Superman is given to floating upwards and downwards with one leg bent, trapeze-artist style, as though he were a lighter-than-air angel. Sometimes he drifts above the world, listening to a babble of prayerful voices, intervening here and there in human tragedy. In extremis, he falls to earth, a crucified Icarus, to be brought back to life - not by the kiss of a princess but a super boy. In short, Singer's movie means for us to call this extraterrestrial deity Savior.
OK, pop mythology can be a great cinematic rollercoaster ride and sometimes even more - but as even director Singer has admitted, Saviors are only as good as their Satanic adversaries, and "Superman Returns"' Big Bad isn't.
As Lex Luthor, Kevin Spacey vamps about baldly, relying on his deadest of deadpan one-liners and posse of dumb and dumbers (including poor Parker Posey) to make him a grabby villain. And then there's his unthinkably evil plot: to build - by means of crystals looted from Superman's arctic lair - a new continent, a black moonscape, that will supplant North America! Why? Because real estate is a more stable commodity than diamonds or gold. It's dumb, it's silly, it's unworthy of any Satan worth his salt.
The other narrative hook of "Superman Returns" is, of course, Superman's yen for girl reporter Lois Lane. It would be no walk in the park for anyone to fill Margot Kidder's shoes as the wonderfully feisty Lois Christopher Reeve first wooed in a magical flyover that so sweetly evoked love and sex. But Kate Bosworth never sparks or burns - she's girlishly pretty but dim, and you can't imagine her getting carried away by super passion. Her fresh-faced boyfriend (James Marsden, an "X-Men" alum) shows more signs of life, for heaven's sake.
Singer's fantasy has its sado-masochistic elements for sure, what with resident nerd Clark Kent always getting kicked to the wall and his hot alter ego getting stomped to a pulp by Lex's bully boys. Worse yet, poor Superman comes blazing back to Earth, all pistons firing, to dead-end with a dull consort and a duller devil. Too bad he couldn't have hooked up with fashion goddess Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep) in "The Devil Wears Prada," another kind of exercise in sadomasochism.
"Prada"'s adapted from Lauren Weisberger's payback novel, in which she skewers her onetime employer Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of fashion bible Vogue, for all her sins against humanity - and especially Lauren. Sweet-faced, fashion schlub Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) signs on as Miranda's newest slave-assistant and suffers the agonies of the damned under her icy, tyrannical rule. In the course of the film, the sweet young thing is tempted by the glamorous hell of which her demonic boss is queen.
Streep strides and glides through the corridors of fashion-mag power in fabulous ensembles, her face a gorgeous mask framed by a perfect silver bob, her voice as whispery and controlling as a cobra's hiss. A mistress of surface non-reactivity, Miranda does not, by word or glance, play by the rules of conversational give-and-take. She remains still, sealed within herself and her own desires, unresponsive to the hungry smiles and guile of those around her. This isn't a hard woman with a heart of goo, who will ultimately be touched by her bright, eager-to-please Girl Friday - though, Narcissus-like, she comes to see a viable reflection of herself in Hathaway.
"Prada"'s moral dialectic failed to inspire me, primarily because the corruption of Hathaway's Candide looked like heaven and her goody-two-shoes notion of the authentic life looked pretty phony. Dressing up in haute couture - under the witty tutelage of Stanley Tucci (just terrific) as Priestley's righthand man - attending celebrity parties in New York and fashion shows in Paris ... all this softened the onerousness of Hathaway's indentured servitude.
The sexy, slightly venal writer (Simon Baker) who wants to introduce his new conquest, a budding journalist, to a New Yorker editor? Hard to take, I know, but seems as if sacrifices could be made. And, saintly to a fault, Hathaway's whiny proletariat pals - including her boyfriend ("Entourage"'s Adrien Grenier), who acts as if he's still in high school, don't really provide a viable counterbalance to all the goodies the Wicked Witch of the West Side and her minions have to offer.
"The Devil Wears Prada" is a harmless jeu d'esprit, undemanding entertainment for a summer evening. But the film's conflicted view of its titular heroine warrants a second thought or two. Miranda Priestley's a priestess of a kind, charged with defining standards of style, taste, beauty in her "brave, new world." Unforgiving, almost entirely self-sufficient and therefore solitary, an icon of power that transcends gender - how is it that this nun in designer clothing is a hateful devil and sexless Superman is such an angel?[[In-content Ad]]
