Lack of humor is kryptonite for 'Superman Returns'

Superman has it all: superstrength, an ability to fly, X-ray and heat vision, invulnerability to anything but kryptonite.

Superman Returns, however, has an Achilles' heel in its lack of spunk and a sense of humor and that makes the first Superman feature film in almost 20 years limp where it should fly.

Warner Bros. Pictures 'Superman Returns' 2 out of 4 stars The verdict: Not a super movie. 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

Director Bryan Singer (X-Men, The Usual Suspects) continues in the same tone as Richard Donner, director of Superman: The Movie and Superman II, the feature films that helped make a national star of actor Christopher Reeve. The result is a visually polished but overlong, too-earnest film that never kindles a passion for the superhero.

Superman Returns picks up shortly after Superman II left off. Five years have passed with Superman (Brandon Routh) absent from daily life on Earth.

Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has gone on with her life, falling in love with Planet assistant editor Richard White (James Marsden), nephew of cigar-chomping editor Perry White (Frank Langella), and having a son with him.

Embittered by the disappearance of the superhero who won her heart five years earlier, Lane has written an opinion piece, “Why the World Does Not Need Superman,” that just won her a Pulitzer Prize.

Meanwhile, on the side of lying, injustice and the criminal way, evil mastermind Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is taking advantage of a freedom obtained when Superman was a no-show at a parole hearing, thus springing Luthor free from his two life sentences.

With bimbo Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey) at his side, Luthor is making up for lost time. His latest scheme for global domination involves extraterrestrial, crystalline technology he found in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to create a new continent — one conveniently seeded with Superman-weakening kryptonite — from which he will rule the world.

That’s the state of things when a meteor bearing Superman — the latter in space to search for his birth planet — crashes into a Kansas field near Superman’s boyhood home.

As Clark Kent, he gets his old reporting job back at The Daily Planet just in time for The Man of Steel to rescue a jetliner plummeting to Earth after its failed attempt to launch a piggybacked space shuttle into orbit.

Conveniently among the press on board that test flight: Lois Lane, who finds her life again intersecting with Superman’s.

Superman Returns then bogs down in its development of the emotional and philosophical dimensions of Superman coming back to his adoptive planet.

Routh projects a clean sincerity, but there’s not much chemistry between him and Bosworth, in part because of a rather disappointing script. The script also promises more than it delivers in teasing that Lane’s son, Jason (Tristan Leabu), might be Superman’s.

As for the meaning of it all, Singer sketches Superman as a Messiah figure: one sent to Earth by his father and one who uses his superhuman powers to help.

Lest we miss that point, one scene has a cruciform Superman floating above the world with his arms outstretched while a plot twist has a dying Superman coming back to life.

It’s here where the lack of perspective-correcting humor is most notable. Normally, such humor comes from an over-the-top villain who reminds us in his or her snarling way that this is a comic book universe.

Spacey, with his gift for playing the cynical and acerbic, would seem tailor-made as villain Luthor, but the Spacey we get is more the dark twin to the K-pax Spacey. Also wasted is Posey, who’s largely confined to a role as a token ditz.

Superman Returns shows how seamless special effects have become almost 30 years after Superman: The Movie trumpeted its flying sequences. Still, Superman’s heroics in Superman Returns seem little more than variations on heavy lifting in the air.

Granted, film critics tend to be a skeptical breed, but Superman Returns’ infrequent humor, sputtering romantic chemistry and slick but largely unremarkable special effects may have even audiences asking: So what?