Superhero Movie

As is always the case with comedies these days, and especially parodies, Superhero Movie revels in its appalling taste.

There are quite a few laughs in Superhero, a parody of the Spider-Man films, with a bit of X-Men and a lot of Craigslist/YouTube jokes thrown in for the heck of it.

Nobody expects spoofs like this to be funny or clever, let alone satirical: It's enough if they aren't soul-crushing or egregiously awful. By those exceedingly lenient standards, Superhero Movie is a rousing success.

How can you tell the target age for Superhero Movie is exactly 13 1/2 years? Because most of the jokes are Internet-related.

A good genre parody has to have a satisfying density of gags -- that way, if you chuckle at 1 out of 30, you're still giggle-happy. Superhero Movie, though, seems to have been given the comedy equivalent of blood thinner.

This latest churn-‘em-and-burn-‘em genre parody flick offers a handful of sophomoric (in a good way) and worthwhile laughs to even the most serious-minded comic-book fans.

After the disgracefully diminishing returns of Date Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie feels almost like a good movie -- not great, to be sure, but good. Almost.

Superhero Movie prefers physical comedy over idiotic references to other movies, so it’s consistently, harmlessly stupid rather than soul-crushingly annoying. And these days, that seems like an achievement.

It wears out its welcome a little too quickly, and doesn't do nearly enough with the treasure trove of genre conventions begging to be skewered.

Craig Mazin’s film aspires to be a junior Airplane! -- a sustained, plot-driven spoof that affectionately kids the conventions of a particular genre.

Its almost-exact replication of Spider-Man's plotline seems like willful laziness, a loose structure upon which every dick, fart, and gay joke can be hung for those amused by the very existence of such things.

What's supposed to be a spoof of all the comic-book movies clogging theaters turns out to be an unfunny retread of the first Spider-Man.

For something so over-the-top, this thing sure seems to bottom out way too soon and too often looking for laughs.

The painfully unfunny Superhero Movie may have one superlative to its name: the longest stretch of flatulence ever heard in a film.

Never has flatulence had a more prominent role than it has in this smelly concoction.

Superhero Movie brings to mind a lot of questions. Why wasn't this green-lit and out in theatres a month after Sam Raimi's Spider-Man?

Leslie Nielsen has been playing incontinent on the screen for so long it's no wonder that, ahem, there's no gas left in that tank.

The best joke (and perhaps the only one) in the new parody film Superhero Movie is in the trailer, which should be a sign that the comedy is not the hilarious deconstruction of comic book adaptations that it aspires to be.

Superhero Movie is basically Spider-Man,s but with fart jokes. A lot of fart jokes.

Even though the movie stars Nickelodeon's popular Drake Bell (Drake & Josh) and is being heavily promoted on the channel, much of the humor isn't suitable for kids, just juvenile adults.