Review: Supergirl (1984)

'Kara, the power source!'

★

When the Superman producers, the Salkinds, pruchased the rights to Superman, they also got the writes to Supergirl, Superman's cousin. And even with the disappointing "Superman III," the Salkinds still wanted to make the movie cause of one word. Mr. Krabs should know the answer to that question, cause it's money. The first Superman movie was great because of it's plot, cast, and director, the late Richard Donner. Superman II was good, but not as good as the first, mainly cause of what Donner had originally done. "Superman III" did terrible because of it's messy plot, and mixture of a Richard Pryor comedy with Superman being a side character. Hence why Christopher Reeve turned down the opportunity to cameo, and Richard Lester turned down the offer to direct "Supergirl."

The film follows Kara Zor-El (Helen Slater), Superman's cousin from Krypton, travels to Earth to reclaim a magical artifact known as the Omegahedron. Disguised as Linda Lee, she enrolls in a girls' school in pursuit of the device, which has slipped into the hands of a power-hungry witch named Selena (Faye Dunaway). As Supergirl, Kara encounters a variety of problems and uses her abilities to foil Selena's plans. The film depicts her struggle to fit in on Earth, as well as her commitment to protect both her new home and her fellow Kryptonians.

I did not like the film what so ever. It's messy, cheesy, horrendous, and exteremly horny. The best part of the movie was watching Peter O'Toole freaking out about the only source of power getting kicked out of the plastic wall surrounding their home. What careless scientist takes his planet's only powersource to play around and show off all the cool tricks with it? Also, he kicks it away from him, like it's a Soccer ball or something. Which then Kara, gets her hands on, plays with it, like a little girl, even though she's supposed to be like in her late teens or something, then loses the dang thing, out the bedsheet type of walls. Peter O'Toole is in this film. I figured, well, since they got Marlon Brando (then cheated him out), to play Superman's father, they might as well get another big star to play Supergirl's father, which was none other than Peter O'Toole. He wasn't a bad decision, the writers just made his character seem like a fool.

The planet Supergirl is in was Argo City, which was part of Krypton but wasn't destroyed when Krypton was destroyed. It instead "moved" away somewhere. That was one of many things that was never explained. Secondlly, that ship Supergirl gets in, why was it out in the open? Shouldn't that be in a secret hanger, cause it's the only one? Like, why even go to the trouble of making a movie that feels like it's laughing at itself?

The villian, who mentioned earlier, was a power-hungry witch named Selena, played by Faye Dunaway. I'm guessing the writers were wondering what do girls like. And someone (probably high), suggested witches, and called it a day. This witch gets the only power source of Argo City and Supergirl has to save it. There's so many weird things happening that it never makes any sense.

I know, i'm being harsh, but it's a bad movie, which has some redeeming qualities. For one, I did like some of the casting. Helen Slater, Peter O'Toole, and Faye Dunaway all put in good perfromance. But the problem was the writing. Had the writing been better, the film probably would've worked.