For Christmas this year I bought my six year-old Supergirl on DVD. Now I know what most people think of this film, but I absolutely loved this when I was little. And I mean really loved it. I have the fondest memories of Peter O’Toole and thought Helen Slater was probably the most beautiful woman who had ever lived. How cool was she with her switching between brunette schoolgirl and blonde, superhero bombshell? How amazing was the baddies’ lair – they live in a ghost train for gawd’s sake. How could anyone not love this film?
Kara lives in Argo City which is cut off from the rest of the universe just because. The power source – Omegahedron – which supports the city (don’t think about it too much) gets blown out of a window when Kara makes an insect so she jumps into a waiting space ship which takes her through the binary(?) into another register(?) and she lands on Earth. As she emerges from the ship her clothes magically change into the iconic magic red/blue/yellow suit by magic or possibly something to do with Inner Space but without Dennis Quaid or indeed The Cowboy. The obligatory attempted rape scene now happens – it’s good to get these things out of the way early, and Helen Slater was probably just really thankful she wasn’t Lea Thompson in genre films in the 80’s where she had to be rescued from the attempted rape by Crispin Glover or erm, well, Howard the Duck.
Kara then sees some teenage girls playing baseball and immediately decides to impersonate one so even though she’s on an extreme deadline to find the Omegahedron before her world dies, she still finds time to do PE and go to maths and inflict damage on teenage bullies, and why not eh? In the meantime a witch called Selena has found the Omegahedron and just knows it’s so superdooper powerful she can dump her boyfriend and make a new hunky one – Ethan the gardener – fall in love with her using nowt more than the most powerful power source in the universe, a walnut shell and a spider.
Trouble is Ethan (he’s not just a gardener no sirree, he is the thing for which Selena battles to the end for because she saw him one day and decided he would do – a worthy reason indeed) accidentally falls in love with Linda (who is really Kara) because of a tractor or something – I lost it a bit here. Anyway he really does love her despite the walnut shell/spider combo because… just because right!
Anyhoo, Kara decides they should just leave but Peter is a bit wobbly on his feet like, probably to do with being a bit drunk and all, and he falls into a whirly-swirly thing. But Kara just, well, leaves. Why didn’t Terence Stamp think about that – what a moron eh waiting all that time for a nuclear explosion to free himself! Dork!
So Kara is back to rescue Ethan and Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane who have been captured for some inexplicable reason, probably to justify their salaries. Oh, and, of course, to reclaim that pesky Omegahedron which she does, quite easily in fact. Then she heads back off to Argo City to see if by some freaking miracle it has survived against all odds while she messed about touching tree’s and kissing boys and hanging out on the waltzer. The End.
No questions are answered in this film, none. The plot really doesn’t make any sense; it doesn’t flow; it doesn’t ramp up the tension properly; it’s trying to be too many sorts of film wrapped in one messy bundle.
Before it was released about 24 minutes were cut from it – I wonder if they explained anything at all? I have serious doubts about that, it’s just too loony to tune.
It could’ve worked. It could have been brilliant. And that’s not in any way criticising Faye Dunaway, who managed to keep Selena from being to OTT. The score is really rather beautiful and some of the dialogue is fantastic. They just threw too much at this and didn’t stop to make sure it made sense. Such a shame really. A bonkers, flawed script but yes, I still loved it – shurrup!
Stacey Whittle
