Well, that was certainly… different. Not that it wasn’t enjoyable or anything, but DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation’s tenth outing in their DC Universe Animated Original Movies line, namely All-Star Superman is a very different sort of story from what the line has thus far trod.

More of a thinking man’s movie than a kid’s knuckle buster superhero yarn, it tells the tale of a Superman whose cells have been over saturated with the sun’s energy, increasing his powers and intellect tenfold but at the same time poisoning him and radically shortening his lifespan.

The question then arises, “what should he do?”. It is a film about Superman settings his affairs in order and dealing with the various threads that make up his existence, leading to a far more intellectually challenging story than what we normally get from these particular movies, a good indicator being that this is the first movie in the line to receive a PG rating instead of the usual PG-13 rating!

The pacing of the first half of the movie feels a little rushed and off, but it does propel us down the story just fine, though it may lose some of the casual viewers not associated very well with the Superman mythos along the way. It covers all the ground it wants to in order to make it a meaningful outing (for example the relationship between Clark and Lois) and ends off in a way which you might not necessarily expect, but one which certainly suits the mood of the story.

As per usual, the animation is strong and the ever so slightly styled and colorful visuals are fantastic to take in. Voice artists all fulfil their respective roles nice and credibly, while the orchestral background music remains as strong as ever.

This is definitely not a movie which action-hungry kids or adults will necessarily enjoy (though it does feature a fair bit of action funnily enough), and I can’t say that I really enjoyed it all that much either -though I can understand what it was trying to achieve and appreciate it for the type of story it so successfully tells.

In the end, it is a little hard to suggest to people trying to get into watching superhero animated movies for the first time (Chantelle gave up on it pretty early on), but if you are already well versed in the Superman mythos, then this certainly is a solid Sunday afternoon movie outing.

Year: 2011 | Director: Sam Liu

(Complete Viewing)

Related Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Star_Superman_(film)