A year after James Gunn rebooted the DC Comics series with the enjoyable Superman, Kal-El’s cousin gets the spotlight. The Supergirl movie stars Milly Alcock as a similarly super, but with a different motivation, young Kryptonian whose heroic duty interrupts a solo vacation.

She’s Supergirl, but She’s Going through a Phase in Her First Feature Movie

Audiences met Supergirl — Kara Zor-El, officially — at the end of last year’s film, stumbling into the Fortress of Solitude after a bender to pick up her beloved pooch, Krypto. (Superman was just dog-sitting.) Now, she’s celebrating her 23rd birthday with a planet-hopping pub crawl. She only invites Krypto.

If drinking with only canine companionship in the galaxy’s worst dives reads as potentially troubled, stick around; we’ll get (blessedly succinct) summaries of Supergirl’s trauma later in the film. Now, though, there’s a reluctant quest afoot: Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts), an outlaw and human trafficker, has murdered the family of a vengeance-minded teen (Eve Ridley). The angry youth wants Supergirl’s help; our heroine would rather stick to the barfly life.

When Krem attacks Krypto, however, Kara is more than happy to join the hunt.

The Characters Outshine the Action

The chase will lead Supergirl across several seedy planets and into a string of rusty starships. The film, which is capably handled by I, Tonya director Craig Gillespie, has the lived-in realism of the Star Wars series with the added irreverence of producer Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy series.

The action lags a bit; this is a film where the dialogue has more impact than the fisticuffs. (Gillespie has dabbled in franchise filmmaking, including Disney’s Cruella, but clearly hasn’t spent much time studying up on his fight scenes.) And, while Supergirl is relatively brief at 108 minutes, there’s probably one relocation too many; we make a lot of stops for a straightforward story.

The cast, however, more than carries us through any dips in intrigue. Jason Momoa — clearly having more fun than he did in a half-dozen or so appearances in the previous version of the DC Universe — arrives as the mercenary Lobo, chewing the scenery in heavy face paint. And Alcock plants her flag as a star to reckon with here, easily making Kara the equal to her much more well-known cousin. Assuming this series sticks around, as superhero franchises tend to do, it’ll be a delight to see her again.

Does Jackass: Best and Last Stand Up to the Rest?

Before we get into this, let me say that I’m a longtime defender of the Jackass movies. At the risk of over-intellectualizing a series that’s primarily about pain and butts, they represent a long-overdue return of pure slapstick. There are traces of Buster Keaton in Johnny Knoxville.

That said, the fifth big-screen adventure for these aging rapscallions is less a celebration of the extremes to which motivated goofballs can push their bodies and more a reminder that … well, time catches up with all of us.

Our familiar jackasses just can’t hurl themselves around like they used to. (Knoxville, in fact, has been warned that he probably can’t handle another concussion and thus remains far from most action.) As in 2022’s Jackass Forever, that means many of the new stunts and setups focus on … well, anatomy — and the various substances the human body can produce. In the glory days of Jackass, such gross-out moments provide a break from the more engaging mayhem; now, they’re all it is.

Only the Greatest Hits Still Work

Diverging from the pure parade of chaos in the previous films, Jackass: Best and Last instead has three modes. About a third of the film is brand new. Then, another segment consists of old, previously unseen (or differently presented) footage. Finally, the film is rounded out by simply revisiting favorite moments from earlier in the series.

It’s telling that the biggest laughs come from decades-old footage. Nothing new can compete with the giant hand — if you know, you know — and I laughed at it, decades after I first saw it. Unfortunately, placing these sturdy bits of chaos against watered-down, modern mayhem only highlights the discrepancy.

Perhaps there would be more of a future here if this film had been a passing of the torch. The crew inaugurated younger members in Jackass Forever, most of whom return (though Rachel Wolfson, the first female member of the cast, is almost entirely sidelined in Best and Last). Instead of letting the youngsters take the spotlight, though, the old gang makes this film into one last ride into the sunset.

If I were Johnny Knoxville, I probably would’ve wanted the same thing. That does not, however, make for a great piece of comedy — and it’s a shame that this will likely be the final chapter.

Story by Sean Collier
Featured Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

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