Sparks

I like movies. I like a bit of cheese. I'll forego big budget effects all day long if you're ready to give me a bit of fun dialogue, a neat story, even just some good facial expressions and clever timing with the cuts.

This film is just bad. I'm sorry. It's bad.

So why did it have an IMDb rating of 7.3 when I decided to give it a whirl?

To be fair, that rating is now down to 6.7 a few days later. But there were THOUSANDS of 8, 9, and 10 reviews according to the breakdown link. For a movie with, I'm sorry, very amateur acting, a derivative storyline that's half Watchmen, half Kick-Ass, and none of the goodness of either. GLOWING user reviews written and then "found useful" by dozens of others.

I... I think the producer got all his friends and family to write nice things. :( I feel sorry for him, I know it can be hard to break out into the larger world with a small budget movie, but the first thing you need is SOME QUALITY, dude. Look at Primer. Look at Pi. Look at The Man From Earth.

From reading other reviews on this film, I feel a lot of people have misunderstood the film and are comparing it to the more prominent superhero films. You can't compare it to Superman, Spiderman, Batman, The Avengers, Captain America. It's dark, it's moody and it's very violent. It's a true old classic-style pulp action hero film that should be taken as such. It's similar to Kick Ass, Defendor and all those films with wannabe superheroes that have no powers whatsoever. They're everyday people armed only with self-made costumes and a passion for fighting crime. I really enjoy these dark 'superhero' films and I thought it was a great indie flick.

As for Miroslav Houdek's review on this film... you can't rate a film lower than what you actually think it's worth in order to bring the rating down so that it's closer to your actual rating. That's just nonsense, manipulative and extremely unhelpful. How is it that your opinion is more valid than all of the people that have rated the film higher than you?

Anyway, go into this film with an open mind and you'll enjoy it for what it is and not for what it isn't.

Similar to Sin City or Watchmen it tries to utilize a film noir approach to tell the story and you can easily recognize that it could have been a great movie. Unfortunately the directors had no idea how they were going to do it. And thru the first 3/4s of the movie I could never shake the feeling that it was somewhat incoherent. It felt like scenes were filmed in a different context and spliced together randomly in the editing room, which also made the performances of the leads appear wooden and uninspired. Only the last 20 mins were not too bad and felt like they were intended to be this way. However they don't save the rest of it at least not for me. But if you can see past its flaws and you aren't bothered by them too much it's worth watching.

Well, "Sparks" is not your typical superhero movie, and that is one of the better things about it. There is something more dark in the deeper layers of this movie. And instead of having picture perfect superheroes, then the superheroes in this movie were every day people with every day problems (more or less).

The story told here was adequate and did have some interesting aspects. But it was somehow dropped on the floor because of some questionable effects, and the entire movie had the feel of being shot in front of a green screen and not enough money was used for the effects. That really struck a terrible blow to the movie.

"Sparks" did have potential for something grander, but it wasn't properly utilized, and that was kind of a shame.

As for the acting, well I will say that they had adequate talents to portray the characters in the movie, but the heavy load of the entire movie was resting on the shoulders of Mr. Clancy Brown. And he did do a good job, just a shame that he didn't have more time on the screen. It was also nice to see William Katt on the screen again, I haven't seen him in a movie for a long, long time.

Whereas many superhero movies today are driven by CGI effects, "Sparks" is driven by the story.

However, I started to slip because of the suppressing feel of being shot in front of a green screen, and that left the movie at a below average experience for me. As such, I am rating it 4 out of 10 stars.

This is just my two cents and not an attempt at writing a pro review. I was ready for this movie to be a piece of crap, so I got pleasantly surprised. I think the plot was great and the costumes was corny as hell - which threw me off a bit in the beginning (that and the lead up to the main storyline which was confusing as to where we we're going). But it soon became apparent to be that i had stumbled into a old school noir movie which isn't about polished superheroes, but "normal" people trying to make a difference. It still has the usual good vs evil with a hint of romance in it, with a red line that keeps you interested throughout the film. People who say this is the worst crap they have seen must be watching only the best there is. Overall a decent flick.