Finally, a comedy for superhero geeks

What happens when Lois Lane and Superman have sex? Asking oneself that question is an American rite of passage, marking the transformation from innocent, friendless child comic book nerd to obnoxious, adolescent, hormonal comic book nerd.
Well, you nerds can now rejoice. Apparently a screenwriter named Don Payne got stuck in that adolescent stage and has written a movie about that question ― with the genders reversed, because it’s funnier that way.
“My Super Ex-Girlfriend” casts Uma Thurman as G-Girl, the superhero savior of New York, and Luke Wilson as the oblivious office worker who asks out her secret identity. But when she starts smothering him (emotionally and physically), he leaves her for a fellow groundling (Anna Faris), and hilarity, as one might well imagine, ensues.
It's a stupid idea for a movie, and the movie that results is also stupid. The gags write themselves: Wilson’s bed goes through the wall ― hilarious! Wilson walks funny the day after the two consummate ― cheeky! Shakespeare this ain’t.
And though “My Super Ex-Girlfriend” is by no means a good movie, I was almost ashamed at how often I laughed ― solely thanks to the wonderful chemistry of Wilson and Thurman. As a non-superpowered teenager, G-Girl was an unpopular brace-faced nerd, and Thurman has a ball playing a nervous, paranoid, naive, controlling, anti-social adolescent in her gorgeous adult frame. Watching her eyebrows twitch is funnier than most of the other characters’ written gags.
Wilson, for his part, is a superb obvious straight man, defusing any possible melodrama with simply delivered one-liners. (To G-Girl, asking why he’s betrayed her: “Well, you did throw a shark at me.”) The default position of his face is bewilderment, a perfect fit for the unpredictable G-Girl, even if this is pretty much the same character Wilson has played throughout his entire career.
Unfortunately, the supporting cast is not quite as appealing. Faris of the “Scary Movie” franchise is bland as Wilson’s genuine love interest, and Rainn Wilson, a wonderful actor who proved his comic mettle as the egotistical Darwinian imbecile in “The Office,” simply can't do much with his stereotypical sex-crazed buddy character in “Girlfriend.”
Another unfortunately cast role is Eddie Izzard as the supervillain, Professor Bedlam. The best villainous character actors can take a paper-thin cliche of evil and run with it, cackling with glee all the way to the bank (or to the art gallery, as Jack Nicholson did as the Joker in “Batman.”) But Izzard doesn’t have the menace behind his eyes necessary to convince the audience he’s a real bad guy, even temporarily.
So if you never asked yourself the question in the first paragraph, you’re probably safe missing this one. There are better sex comedies, even if the “40 Year-Old Virgin” can’t bench-press a Buick.
But if you feel the need to spend two hours out of the long Seoul summer, and if, like me, you are an incurable fan of Uma Thurman, you could do worse than this incredibly stupid movie about super sexual frustration.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Comedy / English
95 min.
Opens Thursday

by Ben Applegate