Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
Peter Hewitt
Cast :
Aaron Abrams …. Corporal Lipscombe
Tim Allen …. Jack/Captain Zoom
Kate Mara……….Summer Jones
Ryan Newman……….Cindy
Aaron Abrams……….Corporal Lipscombe
Chevy Chase………Dr. Grant
Courteney Cox …. Marsha
Spencer Williams……….Tucker
Rip Torn……….General Larraby
Kevin Zegers……….Concussion
Michael West……….Dylan
Last year’s Sky High provided many things in its moderate commercial success. It showed that you don’t need a comic book property to make a good superhero movie; take familiar powers, add in a talented group of character actors, bring in several actors at the tail end of success, tie it together with the usual sort of grandiose film and bring in a band to cover 80s songs and you have the bulk of what could be a good film. While based on the book “Zoom’s Academy,” Zoom feels like a rehash of Sky High except without the great writing and talented cast.
Tim Allen stars as the title character in Zoom as Captain Zoom, a former superhero now running an auto-body shop. Forcefully recruited back into the fold to stop an old foe, Zoom has to train a group of new recruits as his new team to replace the ones he used to have. With time clicking down, he has to use all his might to try and reclaim both his old swagger as well as fit into the new team concept with a bunch of children.
And on paper the film has the beginnings of a top notch superhero film. There is a big grandiose story about a fallen superhero trying to regain his powers and get over a dark past. There’s another tale of team building and acceptance, as Zoom builds his new team and learns a lot about having someone to care about him as well as caring for someone else. Couple this with characters ripe for exposition, and there’s a great story waiting to be told.
Too bad this film doesn’t tell it. The film’s key flaw is that it doesn’t bother to do any real sort of character development. These characters are outcasts, marked differently from others because of the things they can do, but we’re never really exposed to that as an audience. It’s shown to introduce the characters, but it’s never really developed as opposed to being just an assumption of the film. We’re supposed to get that they’re outcasts trying to find their way with others who have similar traits, as that’s a relatively common theme in the genre, but the film never really develops it enough for the theme to come through. What is left is a grandiose theme without the framework to be able to develop it. The film is mainly its second act, leaving a hurried conclusion and a miniscule first act to try and keep some unity to it all. This is a film that could’ve been roughly 30 minutes longer and been much better but falls into the trip of having to be around 90 minutes for release.
The film also has some lousy choices for supporting characters. While trying to duplicate Sky High and its terrific supporting cast seems easy enough, the reality is much different when you cast people in roles they’re not primed to do. Courtney Cox, Rip Torn and Chevy Chase are woefully miscast trying to support Tim Allen. The key that made Sky High good was that character actors like Bruce Campbell, Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, et al, were all in roles they could hit out of the ballpark. Chase and Torn just aren’t funny at all anymore no matter what the role, but in Zoom the prominent roles aren’t designed for the actors assigned to them, Standing out most noticeably is the former “Friends” star.
Cox is miscast as a scientist who doesn’t realize how beautiful she could be when in reality Cox thrives on roles that allow her to use her sex appeal to its finest. It’s not credible for her to be a comic book geek who doesn’t know how to dress herself, falls down all the time and isn’t sure of herself. While she has a strong chemistry with Allen, the character is so sloppy that it takes away from it. Allen, however, is game for the role and it shows.
This isn’t Allen’s best work, his peak having long passed him, but it is still relatively good and is capable enough of carrying the film. His character isn’t written well, none of them are really, but he injects enough into the role to make Captain Zoom an interesting character worth caring about. Allen brings sadness to the character initially, having seen what the kids could turn into and fearing it, as well as delivers some wicked one-liners as the character moves into a more upbeat role as the film progresses.
| CATEGORY | SCORE |
| STORY | 3/ 10 |
| ACTING | 3 / 10 |
| LOOK/FEEL | 8 / 10 |
| ORIGINALITY | 5 / 10 |
| ENTERTAINMENT VALUE | 1 / 10 |
