My rep as connoisseur for fine flim has been slipping lately. I say I know fine art and I know when to enjoy good trash.

Anyway, have you ever seen a film that you thought was “the stuff” and watching it again with the distance of experience and perspective made you wonder “what the heck was I thinking?”. The reigning champion of that category for me used to be New Jack City. the dialogue gave my stomach knots like listening to Charles Barkley speak in public.

Well the new champion was a movie I loved, and watching it tonight with a friend who’d never seen any in the series, i proudly claimed it was the best. well. my credibility shot off it’s pinkie toe a few minutes into the viewing. and I’m talkin bout Superman II.

now-lame special effects and corny dialogue aside there were a bunch of other things that turned me into a screen heckling stereotype. I didn’t keep an actual list but there were a few. the memorable ones that stood out:

  • Nobody thinks it strange that Clark just messed up the hood and grill of the taxicab after it hit him
  • The astronaut fake-low-gravity-moonwalking the background on the moon.
  • The conversation by the 3 phantom zone escapees. in English. on the moon.
  • “Non” throwing down the flags which fall as if in earth gravity.
  • The spacecraft wrapped in golden aluminum foil.
  • New made-up finger-shooting telekinesis beam powers.
  • The stunt doll thrown into Niagra Falls.
  • Kal-El on being newly depowered morphs into Business Casual Clark with a new hairdo.
  • A “crystalized” Kryptonian reciting ­Joyce Kilmer poetry. (eh….could happen? but it seemed so strange)
  • Perry White being knocked unconcious by hitting his head on a ceiling tile
  • People, despite their lives being in danger, just hanging around during the Metropolis beatdown scene, especially the rollerskater with the red sequinned vest, the guy trying to eat an icecream cone, and the guy who continues his conversation after he and the phone booth are tipped over in the Kryptonian-blown windstorm
  • the whole super-hologram/disappear/appear power
  • superman flying over a still shot of the white house given away by the frozen fountain .
  • and let us not forget the brain-damaging amnesia-inducing super kiss (this movie’s version of questionable abilites, i.e., flying around the planet opposite its rotation to reverse time).