Surge of Power...

So I spent most of this weekend visiting my ex-roommate and a friend who'd flown in from Hawaii. It was a lot of fun! We spent most of the time (that wasn't spent driving back and forth to Chicago) watching DVDs and netflixed movies.

Anyway one of the things that we watched was Surge of Power, which was a crappy cheesy superhero movie in the vein of many such, horribly acted, ghastly dialogue, ridiculous costumes...

It was beautiful! I loved it!

The lead was charming enough (and a lawyer! Yay for my eventual profession!) and his powers were not TOO overpowered. His weakness was silly (Dance music!) and the encounters with it contrived, but well, it's that kind of movie. Besides, it allowed for the hero to use his wits as well as his powers.

I was particularly fond of the scientist partner/sidekick. He was not only devastatingly hot, but very very resourceful. He's probably my favorite character. He's snarky, witty and at least half of the hero's success can probably be attributed to him.

Also, he managed to save HIMSELF from danger, which is kind of neat.

The villain is entertaining too. Very scenery chewing. His motivation is astoundingly stupid, of course, but that's even more of the fun. He also had a lot of chemistry with the scientist, who was his ex, naturally.

Oh yeah, pretty much everyone's gay in this. :-) Except maybe Lois "Williamson" (Noel Neill guest stars amusingly), though her son more than makes up for that.

Lots of guest stars and cameos. Like Lou Ferrigno! And Nichelle Nichols.

Oh and a nice bit for my inner feminist. Before the lead character gets his powers, there's constant talk about the last superhero the city had seen: the mysterious "Omen". No one seems to be able to agree on Omen's costume, powers or even gender, though most assume he's a man.

We do get to see Omen, and I'm going to spoil it some by revealing that Omen is played by Nichelle Nichols. I don't feel bad about spoiling this because there's so much else to enjoy and be surprised by.

I also think that this is a real selling point of the movie. It would have been so easy for Omen to have been yet another WASPy white man. There's nothing in the role that really is specific to race or gender. But in Big City, the quintessential legendary hero is a black woman. That's awesome. :-)

Otherwise, admittedly, the movie's fairly white-washed. There aren't as many women either, but that's fairly expected as, well, so many of the roles are defined by romantic entanglements with the lead. Since the lead is gay, that rather narrows down the options for female characters. (The role of damsel in distress is played by Lois's son. :-).)

The plot's completely ridiculous in the way that this sort of thing should be. There are plenty of winks and nods to comic book fans. And unlike a lot of these sorts of movies, I didn't get the sense that it was mean-spirited either. It's a genuine love of comic books fueling this movie, I think.

The acting's mediocre, but the characters really do engage in spite of it all. (I, for one, was griping about the natural emergence of the potential love triangle of the storyline. The son of Lois Lane - she'll always be Lois Lane to me- is cute, but I liked the scientist better. And my inner shipper was all "Grr." I had fun.)

It's the sort of thing that you watch to make fun of and enjoy at the same time. I totally intend to buy it.

Though now I'm sad that there's no Surge comic book. I would *totally* read that!