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Saw Superman Returns (Bryan Singer) on opening night yesterday. It was super crazy packed and the entire Paramount theatres was pretty buzzing with excitement.

I liked the movie - I thought Brandon Routh was excellent as Clark Kent/Superman. He seemed to either be drawing influence from or purposely paying tribute to Christopher Reeve and it was pretty cool. I was pretty satisfied with everything: the action, drama, dialogue, etc. were pretty well balanced and didn’t have any annoying lags as experienced in other superhero films such as Spider-Man or Hulk. Kate Bosworth is fine but certainly does not possess the wacky but lovable charm of Margot Kidder… that being said, however, Lois Lane is not as prominent a character in this as in the 1978 original. Her character is important, of course, but she doesn’t influence the story quite to the extent as the original. Still, it would have been nice to see a performance that had a bit more flare to it. Kevin Spacey doesn’t dominate as much as I thought he would and does a pretty good job as villain Lex Luthor. Parker Posey has some funny one-liners and delivers them with great comedic timing. As usual, she’s great in her supporting role.

The film takes place five years after the first film ends, but as if sequels 2 to 4 didn’t exist. Astronomists found the remains of what used to be Superman’s home planet Krypton and he goes to see if there is anything surviving. Meanwhile, Lois Lane has a partner (James Marsden, in another barely noticeable performance) and a little boy. When Superman/Kent returns, he kind of expects things to go back to the way they were and is very surprised and disappointed to find that they are, in fact, not. I thought it was quite interesting to see Superman being lonely, jealous and dejected. Yes, we’ve seen that in other Superman films, but it felt a bit more realistic in this one, for some reason.

I enjoyed the story and didn’t think it was overly sentimental, even in its “sensitive” scenes. I thought the visuals looked cool and there was a neat kind of graininess to a lot of the shots, with the special effects blending in nicely. The action was great, too - there was just enough to be satisfying on that level while not being over-the-top.

One scene I liked takes place shortly after Superman gets back into the swing of things. He flies up into space and just kinda floats there in a Jesus-on-the-cross-like pose. I thought he was resting at first, but then you see that he is in fact listening… to the entire world… listening for sounds of distress or whatever. Then he flies down and does his thing. Um, for some reason, it doesn’t sound as good after typing it out.

The costume was cool and a nice update from the older one from the 1978 franchise - if you look closely, you can see that it is actually made out of little “S”’s. I didn’t find anything offensive about certain regions of the costume - just another publicity stunt. Not that I was looking, of course. The special effects were actually to my liking and I loved how they made Metropolis/NY look.

Anyway, despite some of it being cheezy and predicable, I really liked it. I don’t mind cheezy as long as it’s done well, and this film certainly was.