My Super Ex-Girlfriend
By John Sheridan, Blockbuster.co.uk
“He broke her heart…she broke his everything”
From the director of Ghostbusters comes this romantic comedy with a difference. Pretty much everyone has been through a bad breakup in their time. It is a painful part of life. For Matt Saunders, breaking up with his girlfriend Jenny Johnson, breaking up is even more painful – particularly when his girlfriend is superhero G-Girl, who uses her superpowers to get back at him.
Imagine
Fatal Attraction mixed with
The Incredibles and you will have this film down to a tea. When Matt Saunders (
Luke Wilson) meets Jenny Johnson (
Uma Thurman) on the subway and tries to retrieve her purse from a nasty mugger, Matt asks Jenny out on a date and the two of them start seeing each other. Although his new girlfriend is intelligent, successful and beautiful, Matt quickly discovers that she has a few quirky character traits such as running off at a moment’s notice and disappearing numerous times over dinner. But he continues on with the relationship anyway, dismissing this being normal female behaviour (he doesn’t get out much).
It is not long however, before Matt discovers that Jenny hides an incredible secret. In addition to being intelligent, successful and beautiful by day, Jenny is superhero G-Girl by night; fighting crime and saving New York from the evil, tyrannical mastermind Bedlum (
Eddie Izzard). It is every guy’s wish to be dating a superhero but Jenny is also rather pushy, controlling and paranoid – not a great combination when you have the power to throw cars into space and to deflect nuclear missiles.
After a while, Matt decides that Jenny is just a bit too psychotic for him and breaks up with her. But Jenny isn’t the type of girl who will take being dumped lightly. Soon Matt finds himself at the receiving end of some super-retribution including stealing his car, throwing it up into space, stealing his clothes (while he’s wearing them) at work, and burning rude words into his forehead. Jenny proves to be the ex-girlfriend from Hell!
Ivan Reitman, the man who has brought so many classic comedies to the screen has done it again with
My Super Ex-Girlfriend. By combining both the romantic comedy and superhero genres, he has managed to create a film that feels fresh and very different. Tackling many of the sensitive issues that superhero films tend to avoid… such as the realities of Superhero sex… (these people can bend steel afterall!), this film adds a new twist to a tired genre.
Luke Wilson plays his role in his usual, charming and slightly sarcastic way, while Uma Thurman puts her
Kill Bill skills to good use as psychotic Ex G-Girl. There are also some terrific supporting performances by
Rainn Wilson and
Anna Faris who play Luke Wilson’s friends at work, Faris continues to prove that she is not just
that girl from the
Scary Movie films.
Excusing the pun, this is a super movie, add to your list now.