Review of Supervized

Supervized (2019)
5/10
Up, Up and...! Where's my inflatable toilet ring?
21 July 2019
Warning: Spoilers
The panoply of possible special powers possessed by superheroes is virtually infinite. Depending on the superhero, they can fly, shoot lasers from their eyes, teleport, shove the moon back into orbit, bend steel with their bare hands, summon dark forces from a darker dimension, exhibit superspeed, communicate with sea creatures, have x-ray vision, walk through walls, control fire or ice, or maybe just crush things. If you can think of a superpower, some superhero could have it or do it.

Except, apparently, avoiding old age. Apparently THAT happens to everybody, even superheroes. And if you can't completely control your bowels, how can you be expected to do any better with your superpowers? 'Tis a cause for concern all right.

And thus we have the premise for SUPERVIZED: a collection of geriatric superheroes languishing in a rest home not unlike one that any of us might find ourselves in in our "golden" years. And in Ireland, for some reason. Simply imagine any mundane geriatric ailment that any average person may experience and apparently it's extra funny if a superpower is involved. Gassy? There's a superhero in SUPERVIZED who can turn his personal gas into a jet of flame and thereby scoot along in his wheelchair. You just have to worry about anybody who might be pushing the wheelchair when he decides to let go, I suppose.

If you're a geriatric superhero who doesn't seem to be able to control his/her superhero capability to the extent necessary to provide for the general safety, you can end up having them forcibly removed via some process that's never made clear.

One of the aging superheroes and residents, arguably the, *ahem*, "hero" of the picture, one Maximum Justice, catches on to the fact that superhero residents are being relieved of their superpowers by some evildoers to be used for some obviously nefarious purpose.

And so a small group of wrinkly superheroes don their superhero outfits one last time to investigate the criminal mystery, confront the forces of evil, and bring the guilty to justice. And stuff like that.

Ostensibly, this is supposed to be a comedy. And it is... to a certain extent. On the one hand, the writing just isn't that sharp or witty enough to produce that many laughs. There is, for example, a running gag about a superhero who repeatedly forgets to put his pants on and we get to look at him in his diapers, and they look a little iffy if you know what I mean. Maybe, MAYBE funny once, but not multiple times.

Truthfully, laughing at old folks because they're falling apart, mentally and physically, as a foundation for humor just isn't that funny to begin with. And if you don't get why that might be right now, just hold that thought for a few decades until you find yourself in that situation and then you'll get it. Trust me.

There's also a running gag where, because of some sort of facility security system at the old folks home, owls are regularly shot down with laser beams. Okay. I have no particular love for owls one way or the other. But why is that funny? Or why is that funny enough to show multiple times?

It's an okay movie and there are a few mild laughs. Watching the old duffer slowly roll forward in his wheelchair by virtue of a rocket powered fart, flames and all, was giggle-worthy mostly because of the obvious charge the old fellow was getting from it.

But SUPERVIZED was clearly going for hysterical, rollicking laugh-riot and it just ain't. It's a movie that you watch to kill time, not because you really are hoping to see something hysterically funny.

The climactic defeat of the villain at the end was particularly weak and disappointingly un-amusing. And if you watch the movie, the truth is that our superheroes actually didn't defeat the villain at all. They simply lost hands down and the villain was fortuitously and accidentally undone by a side effect of too many superpowers concentrated in a single person.

Give it a watch if you're starving for a comedy. It does have several namebrand actors in it, but they're definitely not used to their best effect.
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