Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

It’s going to be difficult for us to be kind with this movie ‘Super Capers’ my friends. Now if it were simply up to me I’d dig deep… and I’m talking depths of hell deep here to find something positive to say about director Ray Griggs ‘comedic’ take on super heroes but since I saw this movie with other people, those people being my wife and my son, I’m boxed in to tell the ugly truth. In the all important production budget to entertainment value delivered ratio, a very complex mathematical theorem, ‘Super Capers’ could very well be the worst movie I’ve seen all year. True, in the absolute sense, I have seen worst movies this year than this one but those movies cost way less to be crappy than this one did. Not that ‘Super Capers’ had a monster budget either but still, whatever it cost, it was not money well spent.

Justin Whalen is Ed Gruberman or Gruber Man. Ed is a normal dude with no super powers who walks around the streets in a goofy costume fighting crime. One fateful evening Ed runs into a red haired beauty in distress (Christine Lakin) and saves the day. Unfortunately for Gruber Man his use of excessive force lands him in the court of the Judge (Michael Rooker) who sentences Ed at the Super Caper halfway house for heroes. We’re about ten minutes in and so far, not funny. Worst still is that my wife has a built in bad movie defense mechanism which causes her to shut down and go to sleep. Her incessant snoring is becoming irritating and frequent nudges are required to stop it.

At the lair of the Super Capers, Ed is greeted by Sarge (Tiny Lister) who will be training him but does nothing of the sort. Our heroes in residence consist of the vain Will Power (Ryan McPartlin), Brainerd (Sam Lloyd) who has a pulsating forehead and can move things with his mind, Felicia Freeze (Danielle Harris) who can freeze stuff and Puffer Boy (Griggs) who puffs up like a blowfish when scared. I don’t think this power serves any real purpose other than theoretical humor which unfortunately never arrives. At this point there is still no humor and my wife’s snoring has gotten to point where I make a move to simply eject the disk but to the benefit of ‘Super Capers’ my son halts this action, not because this movie is entertaining him but he is genuinely curious to see if Gruber Man will develop any powers.

So Gruber Man accompanies our heroes on their first mission in which they ride in a Flux Capacitor enhanced mobile home. You see there’s a running unfunny joke related to that and other movie related props. Anyway this runs our heroes into Captain Sludge (Jon Polito) and his henchmen Cretin. We gotta say that Jon Polito in a tight super villain uniform was funny. Somehow the powerless Gruber Man saves the day but all isn’t quite what it seems. Somewhere in the background lurks the legendary hero the Dark Winged Vesper and somehow he’s connected to Gruber Man, the red haired beauty, the afore mentioned super villains and a bunch of missing gold bullion. I guess we’re waiting to see if Ed will find his real inner hero and save the day.

Something is off kilter with this movie ‘Super Capers’. You know how you might be typing and your hand is a row of keys off leading to a paragraph of gibberish? That seems to be sort of what has happened here because it is so unfunny and painful to watch that it appears that someone’s hands slipped off the keys somewhere along the line. I admired the attempts at humor because Lord knows they kept the attempted humor coming at a rapid pace but the timing was off, the delivery was off, the performances were off… everything was just off. I’m notoriously easy to make laugh but ‘Schindler’s List’ had more laughs than ‘Super Capers’, for real. None of the numerous pop culture references from ‘Men in Black’ to numerous super hero movies and other blatant and more obscure references found a way to hit their marks.

Now as bad as this movie was, and it was pretty damn bad there are some plusses. First it is family friendly, at least in the sense that it’s fairly mild and won’t offend. That is if you’re not offended by watching comedies that aren’t funny. Actresses Christine Lakin and Danielle Harris are reasonably hot, Tiny Lister is in the movie, I liked the sunny sit-com style lighting and as bad as this was it still wasn’t as bad the Seltzer / Friedberg dung heaps ‘Date Movie’ and et al. However it does make the similar themed but lackluster ‘Superhero Movie’ come off like ‘Citizen Kane’.

The harshest criticism that I can lob at ‘Super Capers’ is that my son didn’t even like it. All one needs to do is flash colorful images across a screen and the boy will enjoy himself. He liked ‘Pluto Nash’ for the love of Jehovah. So if a movie that’s almost as funny as ‘Schindler’s List’ sounds interesting to you, by all means, pick your own copy of ‘Super Capers’. Otherwise I’ve suffered enough for all of us.