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Solar Flare (Adam Machinowski) is one of the many people running up and down Hollywood Boulevard wearing superhero costumes and letting tourists take photos with them for tips. That said, Solar Flare claims to be the real deal, an actual superhero - not that anyone believes him, as he never performs any superheroic feats, has no special powers, and his costume, much like himself, is worse for wear. Enter Frankie (Ybette Monreal), an idealistic young busker, who catches Solar Flare on a particularly bad day, sees the good in him, and invites him to lunch so he can tell her his story. And his story is that he was exiled to earth and stripped of his powers as a punishment for, in another dimension, falling in love with a rebel princess. On earth, he learns from a(n ultimately fake) Mayan prophet the world will end on the exact same day, and from then on sees it as his mission to save earth. But this catastrophe is to happen in 189 days, so in the meantime he must learn the ways of the humans to live among them. So he teams up with various characters he meets on the street, from a CD trader (Mike Foy) to two superhero performers (Jason R. Hughes, Ron Bush) to a prostitute (Kitty LaRouge) to learn what they think is for him to learn, from things as basic as eating and sex to as dangerous as alcohol and drug abuse. Through all of this, he may stay strong in his resolve, but his body sure takes several hits, and whether his truth has any resemblance with the actual truth sure is open for debate ...

Now of course, Once Upon a Superhero has its moments of irony, even outright comedy, a film like this just won't work if it takes itself too seriously - but don't expect this to be an all-out laugh fest, as this is also a film with its quiet moments, with lots of heart, and utter drama - let alone of course triplike sequences every now and again. And a clever script and suitably gritty directorial effort sure make his work, while Adam Machinowski's intentionally and fittingly wooden performance really carries the film, all of this resulting in a very unusual but highly enjoyable piece of superhero cinema.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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