On the whole, I liked Superman Returns. Those first two Superman movies were formative film experiences for me, but Bryan Singer's loving continuation of them does them honor. Part of what makes Superman tick is that he's not just an alien brought up as a human, but he's a god brought up as a humble man, and Brandon Routh captures this with grace and poignancy.

Kevin Spacey turned in a perfectly fine performance, but I do think the Luthor character has gotten stale. Frankly, the movie version never made much sense to me. He's kinda smart, he's greedy, he's mean and sarcastic, and he succeeds far beyond his capabilities. Never very interesting to me. Let's see Brainiac or Mogul or Mordru or someone really formidable. Bizarro am formidable.

I wouldn't have minded seeing Kandor, or red kryptonite, or Krypto the Superdog (or Streaky the Supercat, or Comet the Superhorse, or Beppo the Supermonkey). Maybe Superman might have been lent a hand by Nightwing and Flamebird, the superheroes of the shrunken city of Kandor. Or Jimmy Olsen could have adopted his sometime guise of Elastic Lad.

But, hey, no movie's perfect. And if Superman Returns is a box-office success, maybe in the next one they'll tell the story I really want to see (yeah, that's Sonny Bono sitting next to Batman):