SUPER CAPERS is a bad film with a great idea: make a live-action superhero cartoon with nods to Looney Tunes and AIRPLANE! Unfortunately, the execution is a mixed bag that makes it hard to pin down exactly why it doesn't work.
The problem is that SUPER CAPERS is an antique: a high-concept live-action comedy for children. I mean ACTUAL children: from about 4 to 9 years old. They haven't made films like that since the 1990s, and even now, such films usually revolve around talking animals with a supporting human cast. For this reason, the film is full of jokes, homages, and gags that are straight-up rip-offs of other movies that can make it painful to watch if you're an adult who doesn't chuckle at the sight of a flux capacitor in an RV designed to look like the DeLorean.
This was the director's intention, but I didn't realize it until I heard him say so on the audio commentary. It's also the reason why the film is shot in an old-fashioned widescreen format that makes the sets look like sets, and the action fairly boring and uninteresting. The pacing is off, the editing isn't tight enough, and the acting is a tad under-rehearsed, although the cast is game and skilled enough to push through it.
All this makes for a lame movie with lots of slapstick humor that isn't as funny as it should be. But to be fair, since this film wasn't made for adults, it's kind of hard to be so critical of it. Once you take into account that it was made for kids who just wanna watch goofy stuff, it actually kinda works. The director is religious, so there's a little bit of a "message" in the film, but not to the point of proselytizing.
So the film is a rather bland and boringly unfunny film if you see it with adult eyes. But if you imagine yourself watching it as a kid in the late 80s, you can actually kind of enjoy it.
The problem is that SUPER CAPERS is an antique: a high-concept live-action comedy for children. I mean ACTUAL children: from about 4 to 9 years old. They haven't made films like that since the 1990s, and even now, such films usually revolve around talking animals with a supporting human cast. For this reason, the film is full of jokes, homages, and gags that are straight-up rip-offs of other movies that can make it painful to watch if you're an adult who doesn't chuckle at the sight of a flux capacitor in an RV designed to look like the DeLorean.
This was the director's intention, but I didn't realize it until I heard him say so on the audio commentary. It's also the reason why the film is shot in an old-fashioned widescreen format that makes the sets look like sets, and the action fairly boring and uninteresting. The pacing is off, the editing isn't tight enough, and the acting is a tad under-rehearsed, although the cast is game and skilled enough to push through it.
All this makes for a lame movie with lots of slapstick humor that isn't as funny as it should be. But to be fair, since this film wasn't made for adults, it's kind of hard to be so critical of it. Once you take into account that it was made for kids who just wanna watch goofy stuff, it actually kinda works. The director is religious, so there's a little bit of a "message" in the film, but not to the point of proselytizing.
So the film is a rather bland and boringly unfunny film if you see it with adult eyes. But if you imagine yourself watching it as a kid in the late 80s, you can actually kind of enjoy it.