SUPERGIRL
If it were made today, they'd call it "Supergrrl"

  You may be wondering why I'm posting reviews of two early-80's kid-oriented non-horror movies to alt.horror.  A pretty girl asked me nicely.  Could there be a better reason than that?

With three Superman films doing well (even my Calgarian pride can't keep me from seeing that part 3 sucked anyway) and Christopher Reeve claiming at the time that he'd never don the cape again (but he would, resulting in one of the most hilariously awful movies ever made), it was inevitable that somebody would try to start up a similar franchise.  And what better character to build one around than his cousin Supergirl?

Supergirl starts in Argo City, which is like a life-sized Barbie's Dream Castle.  Argo City is in "innerspace", which I guess isn't on Krypton because Krypton blew up.  It's powered by the Omega Hedron, a spinning sphere about the size of a baseball, and Zaltar (Peter O'Toole) has "borrowed" the Omega Hedron to give life to his art.  Zaltar is something of a mentor to young Kara (Helen Slater), who crafts a giant dragonfly and brings it to life, which proceeds to fly out the window, sucking the Omega Hedron out into God knows where. (seems to me that if something like this could happen because of a foot-long dragonfly, perhaps you should be building your cities out of sturdier stuff)  Zaltar takes responsibility for losing it, and accepts with astonishing cheerfulness that he must be sent for an eternity of despair in The Phantom Zone (that two-dimensional prison that General Zod and his two goons were kept in back in Superman II), but not before Kara hijacks a spherical little craft which sends her in search of the little thing.  Both Kara and the Omega Hedron end up on Earth; the former becomes instantly clothed as Supergirl (dig that skirt) and takes up the secret identity of one Linda Lee, a private-school girl, and the latter comes into the hands of the witch Selena (Faye Dunaway) who plans to use it for "nothing less than world domination!"

As far as super-villains, the idea of a witch seems a little subpar.  Actually, I confess, even an evil billionaire like Lex Luthor sounds like a bad idea; it seems to me that a cosmic do-gooder has no business saving humankind's ass from its own rotten eggs.  Now, those three Krypton-criminals stuck in the Phantom Zone, now that makes sense.  A witch with the Omega Hedron is kind of a tough call; she's just a witch, but she has a powerful alien artifact.  Moral questions of extraterrestrial interference aside (if Kryptonians don't have a Prime Directive, they probably should), a witch is just a witch, and who here knows a witch who would last half a minute against Supergirl?

Still, fluffy and insignificant as it all is, I rather like the tone of this movie; it might be a little TOO fluffy, but it's mostly what's needed.  I've never cared one way or another about superhero movies overall, but I do love those first two Superman movies, and director Jeannot Szwarc could've picked a lot of worse cine-role-models.  (I'm still not decided on whether I'm looking forward to the X-Men movie or not...time will tell, time will tell)

At any rate, Dunaway's scenery-chewing is a hoot, and she's as much of a reason to see this as any.  Slater is sweet and appealing though a little bland as Supergirl, though I do dig both the Supergirl suit (basically, a Superman suit with a little skirt) and the uniform she wears at private school.  She seems inexplicably familiar with both Earth and her own yellow-sun-provided super-powers (it took Clark Kent 20 or so years to stop knocking buildings over every time he sneezed), no explanation given, and I know better than to ask, I guess.  O'Toole is slumming in a big way here (what the hell did he do to doom him to go from Lawrence Of Arabia down to this and further on over to Phantoms?), and Mia Farrow looks rather embarrassed to be here in her brief showing early on as Supergirl's mom.  If you're looking for the explosive fun of the first two Superman movies here, forget it; lemme give you a hint, the only thing these movies have directly in common is Marc McClure as Jimmy Olson, dating Supergirl's roommate and defeating my longtime contention that he's gay.

The effects aren't bad, though paling in comparison to its Super-predecessors, as it does with everything else.  My favorite is one scene where Selena conjures up a Forbidden Planet-like invisible monster (they say nudity is the cheapest special effect, but in truth, invisibility is!).  And we get to see what the Phantom Zone looks like, although it looks entirely too easy to escape from (Zaltar doesn't even try because he's too depressed!).  But it's hard to get past this plot, which has Supergirl and Selena spending half their screen time fighting over the affections of a hunky gardener.

Watch for Matt Frewer as a possibly drunk good ol' boy who comes on a little too strong.  In the end, Supergirl tanked in a big way, making maybe a third of its budget back, so if you're wondering why it never caught on as a franchise, there ya go.  Still, it managed to win the hearts and capture the imaginations of a lot of girls of its target audience at the time (who had no Xena to call their own and kept having to see most cinematic asskicking done by men), so you'll find a lot of 20-something women today with fond memories of it (Carla?  Do tell...).

It's harmless and fun when you're in the mood for something harmless and fun; if you're disappointed by a movie as cheesy-looking as Supergirl, you've gotta re-evaluate your expectations.

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