Supergirl Film Review

Supergirl opens in theaters on June 26.

Walking into Supergirl, I was excited. I had real expectations. Before you even get to the DCU of it all, I’m officially a fan of Craig Gillespie. He’s a guy who makes movies that are all better than you’d think they’d be – Cruella and I, Tonya and Lars and the Real Girl and even The Finest Hours, that boat-broke-in-half rescue movie was surprisingly really good. These are movies that could've easily become forgettable entries in their particular genres, like just another biopic or live-action remake or movie about a guy who’s in love with a sex doll. So the prospect of tackling a superhero movie with that particular ability to elevate a film in an otherwise tired category was intriguing.

Where the DCU is concerned, I’m here for James Gunn’s universe. I’ve liked what’s gone into it so far and I loved Milly Alcock’s first appearance as Kara in her cameo in Superman. I think this version of Supergirl is a blast and her solo outing didn’t do anything to change my mind on that front. But this is also where Supergirl starts to become a tale of two movies. For everything that the movie does right, that thing’s got an alter ego that’s doing it wrong. As a result, the movie is this shuffling, few-steps-forward, few-steps-back kind of slog that never really finds a rhythm.

For example, the reluctant hero thing is actually very difficult to pull off. It’s hard to play “I don’t care” in an engaging way, because if the character on screen doesn’t care, then I certainly don’t care either. Alcock manages it here about as well as you could hope for. Kara’s a mess and there’s no real concern with her ever not being a mess as part of her journey. It’s very fun. The other side of that coin, however, is that she doesn’t have much of a journey. She’s not a markedly different person at the end of the movie than she is at the beginning. Not because of anything she did or didn’t do as a character or an actor, but because the story she’s been put in doesn’t give her much to do and the result is a movie that sort of flattens out and drags.