Marcus ([info]marcus132) wrote,

Bullet Point Review: My Super Ex-Girlfriend

My Super Ex-Girlfriend • I'm sick of of "switcheroo" movie trailers in which the hilarious screwball comedy pretends to be a serious drama and then gets ya with a wacky twist (usually accompanied by the sound of a needle being pulled across a record). After so many years of that crap I can see them coming a mile away, and it's just really just insulting to the audience. That being said, the trailer for My Super Ex-Girlfriend totally caught me off guard. My thought process was, "Boring... romantic comedy... boring... love gone wrong... boring... boring... holy shit, did she just throw a shark at him?! Awesome!"

• I really wanted to really like My Super Ex-Girlfriend. As it turned out, I only sort of liked it. It had its moments, and it didn't suck, but sadly it was much stronger in concept than it was in execution.

• The basic story is that Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) has a brief relationship and inevitable breakup with Jenny Johnson, who is the secret identity of G-Girl, who is the super identity of Uma Thurman. Jenny doesn't take the breakup well, and hilarity ensues! Hypothetically. But there is a fundamental flaw at the core of the story that makes it all fall apart.

• Saunders is the sweetest, most lovable nerd since Brendan Fraser in Bedazzled. He is a genuinely nice, likable guy. Conversely Jenny is a balls-out psycho hellbeast. The movie is meant to pick up comedic steam once Saunders and Jenny break up and she starts tormenting him with her super powers. The problem is, by that time the audience's allegiance is on the wrong side of the relationship.

• Saunders behaved very amiably and reasonably through his entire relationship with a completely unstable, unlikable girlfriend. We love Saunders, and we feel bad when his crazy-ass super ex-girlfriend goes ballistic on him, his pets, and everything he loves. The jokes all fall flat because poor Saunders doesn't deserve any of the abuse he takes.

• In order for the gags to have worked, Saunders would have had to have been a dick who had a super revenge coming to him. If we really liked Jenny and saw some cockbag break her heart, then we'd find it really hilarious when she throws a shark at him. As it plays out, you sort of get a knot of dread in your stomach, like "Oh my God, she's insane and indestructible! How will he ever survive?!" It's sort of like Fatal Attraction meets The Terminator.

• On top of all of that, a lot of the gags and one-liners just weren't that funny. You could almost see the writer's pencil marks in the margins of the script saying, "Place holder joke: Punch this up later."

My Super Ex-Girlfriend had a really great trailer. You should watch that instead.

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  • 16 comments

[info]jjthefourth

August 8 2006, 00:48:50 UTC 5 years ago

Oy, glad you saved me the trip to the theatre. I too thought it was a great trailer and concept, but you are dead on in your plot analysis. You have to hate the guy getting beat up, or it's not funny, just...er...bad comedy?

[info]unwiredben

August 8 2006, 03:03:11 UTC 5 years ago

My friends at Heroine Content reviewd it from the feminist point-of-view and thought it was awful.

[info]para_cynic

August 8 2006, 03:39:08 UTC 5 years ago

She didn't expect it to be good from a feminist point of view, did she?

I never saw the "psycho ex" stereotype as particularly pro woman.

[info]marcus132

August 8 2006, 14:10:54 UTC 5 years ago


I can't disagree with that. Although I did think the missile attack scene was one of the funniest in the movie. That was a situation where the whole thing was so cartoonishly overblown that the comedy was allowed to work.

[info]2049live

August 8 2006, 03:57:09 UTC 5 years ago

My wife saw it. She said the only redeeming quality was Eddie Izzard. Eddie Izzard with actual lines to say. Which is pretty redeeming if you ask me, but in the end, she wouldn't see it again. I may wait for the DVD. Maybe.

[info]greatbiggary

August 8 2006, 11:12:01 UTC 5 years ago

Your entire review is actually what I got exactly from the trailer. I thought before the trailer was over in the theatre, the first time I saw it, that while it looked potentially very funny, I felt bad for the guy, because he did have that "golly shucks" kind of naiveness about him, and I, too, was thinking "What has this poor man gotten himself into, and how can he ever hope to defeat her insane imperviousness?"

Man, there hasn't really been a movie I've wanted to see in ages.

[info]marcus132

August 8 2006, 14:08:37 UTC 5 years ago


I thought the trailer left enough questions unanswered to make it funny.

For example, in the shark-throwing bit, you can see that he's in the boudoir of a hot blond. Cheating leads to shark attack leads to comedy. The actual events of the movie, however, completely negate all of this.

You should see Monster House in 3D. I really liked that movie a lot.

[info]para_cynic

August 8 2006, 19:06:09 UTC 5 years ago

Yeah, I thought the shark throwing scene would be the hilarious punchline to some feel-good cathartic revenge. That's what I assumed the movie would be.

Marcus, you have saved the squad by throwing yourelf on this bomb.

Anonymous

August 8 2006, 14:22:38 UTC 5 years ago

Cockbag?!? What about "Over the Hedge" and "Monster House". I saw & liked the first, and the second looks good.

[info]roninspoon

August 9 2006, 01:55:47 UTC 5 years ago

A sweeter more lovable nerd than Brendan Frasier as Adam in Blast From the Past? Is that possible?

[info]marcus132

August 9 2006, 02:01:51 UTC 5 years ago


Adam in Blast from the Past was sweet in a cartoonishly naive way.

Saunders in My Super Ex-Girlfriend is (in my opinion) a pretty realistic lovable nerd.

He's the most lovable nerd in a bad relationship since Ray Caster and HR Julie.

[info]dailygrant

August 9 2006, 02:07:01 UTC 5 years ago

He's the most lovable nerd in a bad relationship since Ray Caster and HR Julie.

And this once again proves my theory that everything happens in life because you want to plug a book.

Well played... clerks...

[info]roninspoon

August 9 2006, 02:28:36 UTC 5 years ago

AND WHO IS RAY CASTER MARCUS?!

[info]marcus132

August 9 2006, 02:45:54 UTC 5 years ago


He's just this guy, you know?

[info]dailygrant

August 9 2006, 04:19:12 UTC 5 years ago

And then you throw in a reference to the book that inspired your other book! There's no stopping you!

That's all I got. I'll go back into hiding for a while.

[info]em_dash_will

August 9 2006, 19:01:08 UTC 5 years ago

Whoa—I blame Caster for that, not HR Julie.
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