For those of you scoring at home, yes, there already was a parody flick called Superhero Movie, not to mention the fact that a glance at IMDb shows seven superheroes being targeted by Friedberg and Seltzer's Disaster Movie. Hell, before that, while not an Airplane!-style spoof, we had Mystery Men and writer/director James Gunn's The Specials to contend with, and even Hancock is an ironic take on the genre. Yet the truly depressing fact is that none of these movies seems to be a definitive take on the concept. Frankly, other than the sports movie (which Hollywood also failed to riff on with The Comebacks), there hasn't been a better example of a genre that follows such a well-ingrained pattern like the superhero origin story. The Naked Gun is funny because almost everyone can immediately create the idea of a hard-boiled cop voiceover in their head, and from there the filmmakers can play those expectations into a funny joke.

But that's not all! Super Capers introduces another genius conceit, an inventor character that takes all of his inspiration from other movies! Thus, we get a silver RV with familiar-looking cooling vents on the back, doors that open into wings, a giant Y-shaped circuit in the back and the potential to travel through time, if accelerated to 88 miles an hour. Oh, wait, that idea isn't even original either! While Super Capers acknowledges it as a joke (as if that makes it better), it's already been noted that many of the Friedberg/Seltzer movies just recreate scenes from other movies wholesale, so not even the movie's copyright infringement is at all inspired. Writer/director Ray Griggs thanks his heroes Spielberg, Lucas and Zemeckis in the end credits, but he should probably be apologizing.

The biggest flaw with the movie, though, and with pretty much every entry in the genre these days, is that Griggs doesn't know how to stage a joke to save his life. At least 25% of the comedy in Super Capers relies on sound effects, for crying out loud. The whole point of the genre, at one point, was to take something dramatic and turn it on its ear, without losing any of the dry, deadpan seriousness of the original material. I wouldn't want to rest the collapse of the genre all on Leslie Nielsen, who seems like a nice guy, but there's a part in The Naked Gun where he goes cross-eyed, and I've always thought this was the first sign of everything going wrong. The moment anyone in the movie is in on the joke, the moment the entire thing falls apart.

Just thinking about the plot makes my brain want to shut off, but I'll try my best: Ed (Justin Whalin) is a wanna-be superhero who finds himself "holding the bag" in an alleyway "assault" of a would-be mugger. The mugger sues, and Ed is sentenced to join the Super Capers rehabilitation center. Once there, he meets a crew of misfits, that...zzzz. It doesn't really make sense why several of these superheroes are there. Will Powers (Ryan McPartlin), all intents and purposes, seems to be like a dim version of Superman, and you never hear of any terrible accidents or mistakes that would have sent him to rehab. Felicia Freeze (the normally charming Danielle Harris) is also there, and she's outright competent. It also amuses me that Sarge (Tommy "Tiny" Lister, Jr.) doesn't seem to have a superpower at all. Herman Brainerd (Sam Lloyd), Herbert Q (Oliver Miurhead) and Puffer Boy (Griggs) make more sense as residents, since they each have their own, poorly-written issues. Miurhead invents all of the movie rip-offs (including a short, cigar smoking, buff robot with a thick Austrian accent who calls people "girly man", har har) and Puffer Boy puffs up at inappropriate moments (ho ho), but Lloyd, as Brainerd, is one of the few rays of light in the whole movie. Most people will recognize him from "Scrubs", where he played the frazzled hospital lawyer, and I found myself almost laughing here and there as he forcibly bled amusement from the unfunny dialogue.

Ugh. I was going to go on to talk about the evil Judge (Michael Rooker) with a "mysterious" (i.e. blatantly obvious) past, the terrible visual effects, the movie's inability to remember information it previously established, and the terrible, awful, no-good post-credits ending, but I just don't want to talk about Super Capers anymore. It's an embarrassment, and not even an original or surprising one at that. Super Capers establishes itself as an origin story, and the entirety of the film indicates that Griggs thinks he's going to be helming his sequel at any minute. As of right now, I'd say that's the best joke in the whole movie.

The DVD
On the disc, there's a piece of art that I guessed (correctly) to be Drew Struzan's work, but Justin Whalin was making a weird face and I wondered why Struzan drew him like that. Then I noticed that Whalin is making the same face on the front and back cover, which looks kind of painful. Why the studio didn't actually use the Struzan artwork for the DVD cover instead of the Photoshop vomit they came up with is beyond me. The back cover also throws in some caricature style artwork by Tom Richmond, making the style of the whole thing even more confusing, and whoever picked the single most unflattering, frog-chinned image of Clint Howard for the rear cover is a cruel person (I assure you, he looks like his normal self in the movie). The case is an Eco-Box, and there's a slipcover that has identical artwork.

The Video
The 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen picture looks like it could have used just a little more room to breathe on this DVD, because fine detail degenerates into blockiness and artifacts. Colors are okay, although they don't really jump out off the screen at you. The most baffling thing is why this silly kid's movie is filmed in 2.35:1, especially because the scope aspect ratio tends to enhance how barren and uninteresting Griggs' compositions are.

The AudiO
Super Capers sports another in a long line of Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks for low-budget movies that barely has anything going on. This is a cheap movie with cheap sets and cheap lighting, and this audio track feels about as cheaply made as the rest of the picture. Dialogue is clear, music comes out the sides and I almost never heard anything coming out from the back. Only Spanish subtitles are provided.

The Extras
The most substantial bonus feature is an audio commentary by writer/director Ray Griggs, with uncredited support from stars Justin Whalin and Samuel Lloyd. I'm going to be honest: I just couldn't bring myself to watch the entirety of Super Capers again, but the first ten minutes or so consisted of Griggs pointing out the occasional production detail and several homages, with Whalin and Lloyd making lame jokes in the background.

"The Making of Super Capers" featurette (7:39) is a genial look at the making of the movie, although Justin Whalin seems to think he's making a really important movie, and not one, but two people's names are spelled wrong in their on-screen credits, which is ironic, because the second person, Isaac C. Singleton, Jr., is actually talking about the importance of reading people's names in the credits. D'oh...

A short reel of deleted scenes (3:30) -- which are actually extended scenes, not deleted ones -- include an amazingly original scene where Ed listens to arguments from an angel and devil on opposing shoulders, a weird scene where I think someone is getting beat up but may be having some sort of weird sex (there's a rocking van), and a bit more Michael Rooker. They aren't good, but I'll admit they're no worse than what's included in the movie itself.

Things finish with a digital comic book illustrated by Tom Richmond that actually manages to prove that Super Capers might have been tolerable, if not particularly funny, as a MAD magazine-style comic strip, and a gallery of storyboards. The movie's original theatrical trailer (2:30), which actually plays slightly better than the movie itself, has also been included, along with 2 TV spots (0:17 and 0:32).

Automatic trailers for The Battle for Terra, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles": Season 7 - 25th Anniversary Edition (Parts 1-4) and Wolverine and the X-Men play when you put in the disc.

Conclusion
I continue to wait patiently for that grand day when someone makes a good spoof movie, and all of the crap that's been pumped out since Scary Movie 3 is put to shame. In the meantime, feel free to occupy yourself with many things...just make sure none of them are Super Capers. Skip it.