On Nov. 21, 1984, Tristar launched its $35 million adaptation of Supergirl in theaters stateside as a by-product of the Christopher Reeve-led Superman franchise. The movie, starring Helen Slater and Faye Dunaway, in the end grossed $14 million domestically in theaters. The Hollywood Reporter’s unique evaluation of the characteristic is under:
The primary hassle with Alexander and Ilya Salkind’s elaborate manufacturing of Supergirl is that it doesn’t actually fly. Regardless of its expense and hard-working solid, its in depth, costly and eye-filling particular results, and an efficient however ear-splitting rating by Jerry Goldsmith, the movie stays surprisingly small, because of David Odell’s unimaginative, earthbound screenplay. Even its occasional makes an attempt at campy tongue-in-cheekiness seldom elevate greater than a titter.
One retains eager for Supergirl to do one thing spectacular, like steadying a towering skyscraper or halting a runaway practice. As a substitute, she manages to place out a two-alarm fireplace and save Hart Bochner from being crushed to demise by an array of amusement park bump’em vehicles. The Salkinds have repeatedly said that they didn’t need Supergirl to change into Superman IV, and the unhappy truth is that they’ve succeeded all too nicely.
Maybe the most important downside with this film is that Supergirl (Helen Slater) appears terribly leisurely about her fateful mission. Catapulted to earth to retrieve the life-sustaining Omegahedron that slipped from her fingers again in Argo Metropolis (which splintered off from Krypton when that planet was destroyed), she assumes the identification of teenaged Linda Lee and enrolls at Midvale Excessive. It simply occurs that her supercilious math instructor (Peter Prepare dinner) is in love with a carnival fortune-teller (Faye Dunaway), whose modest ambition is to rule the world. When the Omegahedron lands in her picnic lunch, she rapidly seizes her alternative.
In the meantime, our Supergirl is making highschool mates and enemies and falling in love with the muscular Bochner. However so has Dunaway and much an excessive amount of of Supergirl’s consideration is diverted to rescuing her younger man from Dunaway’s evil clutches. For the reason that lady doesn’t even know that Dunaway possesses the valuable energy supply till nicely on within the story, one wonders why she continues to hold round Midvale Excessive — until it’s to save lots of Bochner from the quite a few scrapes that Dunaway retains devising for him.
It’s a film by which the baddies not solely have all of the enjoyable however present most of it. Helen Slater, as Supergirl, chosen by the Salkinds after a global search, is as healthful and thrilling as a vanilla malt. When she flies via the air with one arm punched out earlier than her (as she does steadily), she appears to be saying, “Gimme an M, gimme an I, gimme a D …” Her romantic interludes recall Sandra Dee in her prime. And younger Bochner is understandably queasy in his supply of the poetic traces he’s been handed for these identical interludes.
Alternatively, Dunaway and her tart-talking sidekick, Brenda Vaccaro, appear to be having the time of their lives as mistresses of the shades of darkness (their ramshackle abode is a funhouse Ghost Practice experience festooned with skeletons, spiders and tattered netting). Dunaway is amusingly imperious as she tries out her newfound powers; Vaccaro is her extra sensible associate, by no means fairly positive how their enterprise goes to prove, however anticipating the worst. And Peter Prepare dinner, who may give a droll twist to the flattest of traces, is urbanely sinister because the professor who’d like to start out a coven of his personal. Peter O’Toole lends his customary grace and authority to his function because the patriarch of Argo Metropolis, though he seems solely briefly within the movie’s opening and shutting reels; whereas Mia Farrow, given fourth billing, is definitely on the display screen for lower than two minutes as Supergirl’s mother.
With its name-heavy solid as just one instance, Supergirl is a movie that guarantees greater than it delivers. The catastrophies that our heroine averts are awfully small potatoes — a bulldozer operating amok, an amusement park experience rushing uncontrolled, some prankish youngsters scheming to show the lady’s bathe right into a steambath. Even the particular results emerge as lower than spectacular — particularly since Jeannot Szwarc’s plodding course affords ample time for one to take a seat there and determine simply how they have been completed. And the scene obligitoire of those epics, the race via house, comes so early on that it’s all however thrown away.
Regardless of all these faults, this Tri-Star presentation will in all probability make it handily via the vacations on the energy of its heavy presell marketing campaign; however not one of the kiddies that I spoke to after final Saturday morning’s preview expressed any eager curiosity in going again for a second serving to. — Arthur Knight, initially printed on Nov. 20, 1984.
The 1984 theatrical poster for ‘Supergirl.’
Everett Assortment
