It's a Bird; It's a Plane; It's a -- No, It's a Bird.

Rating: 6/10 (5 April 2014)

Lots of recognizable names in the cast as well as a couple of talented newcomers, and the story is complex, with several somewhat confusing flashbacks. But at heart it's just the old story, reminiscent of one of the later sequels to the original "Superman" of 1978, with Christopher Reeves, plus a stylish and cadaverous green pallet and an absolute cornucopia of computer-generated graphics, with added hints of "The War of the Worlds" and "Mars Attacks." Cavill is the alien from Krypton who is adopted by a farming family in Kansas and must hide his latent status because, as the editor of the Daily Planet, Laurence Fishburne, puts it, it would start a panic if people knew. He communicates this in a hushed voice to Lois Lane, Amy Adams, whose presence is appealing.
I would have killed to see this movie if it had been available when I was a child, during the comic book age. Now it all seems to much and too little at the same time. Too little depth but so much action that it set my nerves on edge and I had to dash for the scotch. The action -- the visual f/x in general -- aren't deliberately paced. They come at you in bundles. WHAM! BANG! Bodies are flung around at the speed of light with abandon. The attacking Weasels of the US Air Force ought to know better than to try destroying an alien space craft on a small town street. Haven't the authorities ever seen a science fiction movie? The armed forces always lose. Except in "Tarantula", in which Clint Eastwood manages to set afire a spider the size of Greenland. A disgusting sight. But just try something like that with Gort -- or with these evil-intioned goons.
Everyone is either good or bad, as in a comic book, and sometimes that's fun, as in "Indiana Jones" or the original "Cape Fear." Just sit back and let it wash over you. But the sort of things on screen here -- the tornadoes, the cars flung through the air, the anti-gravity machine turning Metropolis into a black hole -- have all been done before, and the people of the city running in panic from the massive cloud of dust raised by a collapsing building is genuinely tasteless.
On the other hand, reducing the broth, if you enjoy a bonanza of destruction and fist fights and so on, this is your movie. I outgrew it about the time I lost my sense of the absurd.