'Superman Returns' doesn't quite fly

Superman's a super drag. You think Clark Kent is a tedious milquetoast, try talking to the Man of Stone — that is, Steel. He's a cold, witless fellow with nice pecs and a foppish cowlick curling just-so down the middle of his blemishless forehead. We'll allow that he's rescued the world on numerous occasions (yawn, stretch), and that he has an intriguing spandexy fashion sense. But his presence is that of a slab of granite chiseled into a platonic ideal of truth, justice, virtue. He's the Barbie doll of superheroes, stolid and emasculated, sheer plastic perfection.

Warner Bros. Pictures 'Superman Returns' 2 out of 5 stars The verdict: A not-so-super return. Director: Bryan Singer Starring: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, James Marsden, Kevin Spacey, Parker Posey Run time: 154 minutes Release date: June 28, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for some intense action violence See showtimes Up, up and away! •  The Superman quiz tests your super skills. •  Stills from the movie give you a preview of the action. •  The many faces of Superman through the years. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Superman Returns'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Yes, Superman is supposed to be perfect, yet he's also supposed to be flesh and blood, charming, disarming, pumped by his need to do good, surging with passion when saving the day and poignantly troubled by the Earth's ambient evil. No matter his interplanetary origins, Superman feels our pain.

In the serviceable but rarely fun "Superman Returns," Superman returns, limply. It's not soap star Brandon Routh's fault for creating this one-note figure, though the actor is something of a blank. It's the fault of director Bryan Singer, who reveres the old-school basics of the Christopher Reeve "Superman" (1978), while hoping to reinvent the franchise with computer-animated overkill and big ideas sunk by the absence of logic. He wants his Superman pure and manicured, and curiously sexless.

Approaching the task like a world-on-shoulders burden, Singer's missteps are clear. To achieve an epic texture, he's inflated the film with gassy longueurs and sloowed the pace; he's miscast his Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth); doesn't give Kevin Spacey's sparkling Lex Luthor enough screen time; and plays up Superman and Lane's romance without recognizing they have as much chemistry as an overtrained Labrador (Superman) and a spayed, fixed-eyed terrier (Lois).

With the zooming blue credit titles and John Williams' hummable theme from the '78 film, "Superman Returns" begins with a flourish. And then it promptly slogs. Superman has left Earth for five years, revisiting his destroyed home planet Krypton. This also means Clark Kent has been gone for five years. Still, no one seems to notice the odd synchronicity of Superman and Kent returning to Metropolis on the same day.

Another tidy coincidence: He returns the same week Lane is receiving the Pulitzer Prize for her editorial in the Daily Planet, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." Why she wrote this so many years after he vanished isn't clear, and it sounds like a passive-aggressive retort by a lover scorned. (Recall, Superman, like Spider-Man, cannot commit to the woman he quietly loves for a complex of reasons.)

So he's back. So is Lex Luthor, played bald and with the film's only organic zest by Spacey, who, when not stuck in the script's Bad Guy banalities, gets off some spittling histrionics that make you grin. Suffering an incurable God complex, Luthor's big plan is to steal Superman's "crystal technology" from the Fortress of Solitude — Superman's bachelor pad, a cavernous ice palace totally unfurnished except for a big screen TV from which the late Marlon Brando intones oracular solemnities. (Never mind.) Luther gets the goods and goes forth with his convoluted, totally illogical scheme.

Singer saw in Routh a calming likeness to Reeve, who died in 2004. When he smiles, Routh shows an eerie resemblance to Reeve, with the razor lips and dimpled chin. His features also bring to mind Jason Schwartzman, although Routh, at 6 feet 3 inches, has about a foot on the "Rushmore" star.

If Routh isn't commanding as the all-American savior — he's supposed to be lost in brooding, but comes off more as an egoless vault — Bosworth is simply dull. Her Lane is uptight and humorless. Unlike Margot Kidder's '78 Lane, a sort of screwball ditz who could toss a one-liner ("You've got me? Who's got you?"), Bosworth's is a sober career woman with an out-of-wedlock little boy (cutely annoying Tristan Leabu), who could be the link to the inevitable sequel.

Singer prefers making spectacle over making sense, but at this point some of us are suffering CGI fatigue. The soft edges of digital animation are an upgrade from the hard lines of blue-screen effects in the original movie, and now we can hear the shower-curtainy rustle of Superman's cape.

What hasn't evolved is airtight storytelling. Logic holes riddle the movie, not the least of which is why Superman keeps busy with house fires and deli holdups while the world is being riven by famine, war and terrorism.

"Superman Returns" has been compared to the recharged "Spider-Man" and "Batman" franchises. But the movie isn't nearly as thoughtful and moving as "Batman Begins" or as darkly exhilarating as "Spider-Man 2." Let's tiptoe on a limb and say it's also not as interesting or intense as Ang Lee's underrated "Hulk."

Singer is an avowed comic book fan — his "X-Men" films strike an exemplary balance of action, gravitas and wit — but his resolve not to tinker with the basic recipe creates a stuffy, self-conscious air that muzzles playfulness.

Not only is joy and fun lacking in this superhero tale, but so is toughness, a dramatic urgency for the stakes on screen. It feels flabby and toothless. I hardly buy into the subtext of America needing a superhero for these imperiled times. That's silly. What America really needs is a good summer movie, a layered divertisse- ment with grit and life and wholly new excitements. We need to laugh and be thrilled. This Superman doesn't come to the rescue.