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Puppy-eyed stares, pillow talk, all-night shag-a-thons... ain’t love grand? Call us cynical, but Total Film knows that for every Great Love there’s a Bad Break-Up where your other half swaps your dinner for dog food. Yet, even in our roster of unhinged exes, no one can match Uma Thurman’s G-Girl. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a whacked-out Wonder Woman hungry for revenge. Move over, Lorena Bobbitt...
A high-concept genre-blender, My Super Ex-Girlfriend seems like such a forehead-slappingly obvious idea in retrospect. Rewiring the “boy meets girl, boy loses girl” formula which has been doing the rounds since Adam first played hide-the-serpent with Eve, Ivan Ghostbusters Reitman’s relationship flick mixes chalk’n’cheese and whips up a tasty little morsel: a super-funny rom-com with a cape. Forget last year’s embarrassing Sky High (that was easy, wasn’t it?), My Super Ex-Girlfriend knows there’s more to supergags than putting Spandex underpants on your head.
Most of the fun is in the fury. Pissed off at being dumped faster than a hot cowpat, G-Girl gets mad and even – using her superpowers to emasculating effect. She launches Matt’s car into orbit, bunny-boils his pet goldfish with heat vision and chucks a thrashing, gnashing great white CG shark into his bed in a balls-out scene that’ll make you wish cinemas had a rewind button.
Self-effacing leading man Wilson takes it all on his chinless chin, backed up by some buffed-up gems from Simpsons writer Don Payne. “It’s not one of those Crying Game things, is it?” squirms Matt, when Jenny tells him she has a secret to confess, adding plaintively, “I mean, I’m from Denver...”
Meanwhile, Thurman proves she really is the first lady of cinematic vengeance – she’s scarily convincing as headcase superheroine G-Girl. Effortlessly upstaging both stars, though, is Matt’s shamelessly horny mate Vaughn (Rainn Wilson), who gets a full quota of quotable lines (“She looks like a cheerleader from Spank Me University!”).
With the details sewn up, it’s the bigger picture that sometimes falters: Eddie Izzard’s megavillain and a Smallville-style high-school flashback seem redundant, while Anna Faris (as G-Girl’s rival) struggles to make any impact in Thurman’s shadow – at least until... no, we won’t spoil it.
A hurried ending suggests the CGI broke the bank long before the final shot, but ultimately it’s not the superheroics that matter in this movie. A sparky comedy about the special kind of hell relationships can sometimes fall into, My Super Ex-Girlfriend teaches us many things about the sex war, not least of all: if you ever meet your own supergirl, never, ever, let her get on top in the sack. All we can say is, “Ouch.”
An original spin on two familiar genres, this crossover comedy could be more polished, but it wears its Spandex with pride.
