Also known as Kara, the title character of Supergirl is going through a hard-partying, late-sleeping, messy-apartment phase. Played by Australian Milly Alcock, Superman’s younger cousin from Krypton dodges calls from her fretful super-relative (David Corenswet) while on an interplanetary pub crawl to celebrate her 23rd birthday. Binge drinking with her faithful pup Krypto at her side, she gets pulled into an adventure involving the feisty young Ruthye (Eve Ridley), who wants revenge because her family has been murdered by a nasty biker-pirate type called Krem, played with impressive odiousness by Matthias Schoenaerts.
Supergirl and Ruthie end up hopping across several planets – only a little of the film takes place here on Earth. The ingenuity of the story is that some of these planets have Earth-like “yellow suns,” which give Kara her superpowers, while others orbit “red suns,” which deprive her of these powers but allow her to get inebriated (like Superman, she’s immune to the charms of alcohol on Earth). Still other planets have “green suns,” which are toxic to her. This solves a challenge of DC’s “Super” tales – creating dramatic stakes when your heroes are essentially omnipotent and invincible, except via the formal Achilles heel of Kryptonite.
Otherwise, this superhero flick, scripted by Ana Nogueira from an 8-issue comic cycle of 2021-2022 called Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, is an uncredited but unmistakable remake of the classic Western True Grit. There’s also an additional race-against-time element: Kara has just three days to track down an antidote for the poisoned Krypto. Jason Momoa turns up amusingly, not as Aquaman this time but as a biker/pirate/assassin antihero called Lobo, bellowing with admiring laughter as he and our heroines become allies.
There was a 1984 movie of Supergirl; despite the sweetness of Helen Slater in the title role and a juicy star turn by Faye Dunaway as the villain, this new one is better. The director is another Australian, Craig Gillespie, who has shown, through movies as diverse as I, Tonya and Cruella and Dumb Money, that he knows how to make broad-canvas material snarky and funny and human. He keeps the action here zipping along capably, including some well-handled, economical yet affecting origin-story flashback sequences about Kara and her parents (Emily Beechum and David Krumholtz) back on Krypton (the character of Supergirl was introduced in 1959 in Action Comics).
By the standards of big summer blockbusters, this Supergirl is relatively modest in scope, which I found agreeable. It even clocks in at under two hours! Most of its charm derives from Alcock, smuggling out soulful compassion from behind her pugnaciously set jaw. She has a nice rapport with Ridley’s equally determined Ruthye. But a word should also be grudgingly said for Krypto – even though he’s an obvious CGI creation, he comes to endearing life and steals every scene he’s in.
