Super Capers: The Origins of Ed and the Missing Bullion

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.

I just watched this off HBO GO last night, and just looking at the overall production values (and the fact I never heard of it in the 6 years since it was released), I thought it would be absolutely horrible. Now it was bad, don't get me wrong, but not AS horrible as I thought it would be. It's got a great cast- Michael Rooker, Justin Whalin, Clint Howard, Tom Sizemore, Adam West (not as "Batman", but as "Manbat" LOL), Danielle Harris, etc.. and I did chuckle every now and then (that Arnold-imitating robot- stupid, yes, but I couldn't help laughing at it- more so than with it.. o.O ).

Well, the funniest stuff in the movie for me (other than the silly robot) was some of the stuff more at the beginning with like Clint Howard and Tom Sizemore, but...if you want to see a super-hero comedy dealing with the sorta super-hero mythology, and playing around with that, see something like "Mystery Men" (1999) or, better yet, 2008's wonderful Peter Berg-directed "Hancock", starring Will Smith. This movie TBH seems to be more of a "kiddie movie"...

This movie absolutely blows! Even for what it is supposed to be, a low budget super hero spoof. Ray Griggs did a shameless job of acting in his own movie with uninspired skill. As a director he spent the money on the things that were not in the shot very long and not focusing on costumes falling apart in close-ups. Two million dollars on what? The neighbor kid makes better movies and all he has is a cheap DV camera and some imagination ..which this thing lacks. I hope you are sued, not by all of shameless unauthorized Easter eggs but by everyone who paid money to see this. Don't bother even if your tastes includes cheesy spoof comedy. Nothing to see here, move along.

A good guy with no powers joins a superhero team with no clue against a bad guy with no shame.

What this film has going for it is the incredible cast -- Danielle Harris, Tom Sizemore, Clint Howard, Michael Rooker, Jon Polito, Doug Jones, Adam West and more. If nothing else, it probably has an actor in it that you enjoy seeing.

Unfortunately, as pretty much everyone has pointed out, that is about all it has. I love Michael Rooker, and would watch him in anything, no matter how bad. And the problem here is not the acting, but the terrible jokes and overly done references to "Star Wars" and "Back to the Future" and others...

When I first learnt about his film, I was intrigued. When I saw the trailer, I was more than interested. A funny superhero parody, with movie references and comic style drawings? This was going to be sweet. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

Basically, nothing works here - the jokes fall flat, the parody is barely present and the is replaced by unbearable campiness. All the funny moments can be seen in the trailer.

The actors did their job, cashed their pay-checks and went home immediately forgetting what movie they had just been in. The best one is b far Adam West and he's in it for about two minutes. That should tell you about the quality of acting.

Whatever the authors intentions were, they didn't succeed. For me the worst part were the constant movie references - after about 30 minutes they got incredibly annoying.

I can't recommend it to anyone. It's bad. Not in a good way, more in a "how long until the end credits?" way.