‘Supergirl’ review: DC is already back to making mediocre superhero movies

It was only a year ago when everybody was euphorically proclaiming, “DC is saved! This is the dawn of a new era!”.

Well, hold your Kryptos. 

With the forgettable “Supergirl,” the second chapter in the revamped DC Universe, the franchise quickly plummets back down to Earth. As the old saying goes: the more capes change, the more capes stay the same.

Director Craig Gillespie’s movie starring an appealing Milly Alcock isn’t a total wreck. It’s blessed with a strong lead and is adequately enough executed. Had we not been bombarded with a million superhero movies over the last 15 years, “Supergirl” would be passably fine. 

Yet we have been bombarded with a million superhero movies over the last 15 years. And box office receipts have shown that the audience has reached a point where we selfishly would like these films to at least attempt to be special and unique. In story, style, stunts. Something! 

What a bummer then that “Supergirl” is rather unlike its title character, a k a Kara Zor-El, an against-the-grain rebel with a cause. No, this is a movie that tries super hard to fit in and thus fade out. And often that means, like a goth in the cafeteria, pretending to be edgy.

Kara starts out as a super party girl — a drunken mess just like Aquaman or Thor in “Avengers: Endgame” — who takes shots all night and then wakes up drooling on the floor with a knife in her thigh. 

Supergirl’s slumming it on other planets far away from Metropolis as she goes hard for her twenty-third birthday. Really, though, she’s avoiding responsibilities and hiding from her painful past. She was sent to Earth from planet Krypton by her parents after deadly Kryptonite ravaged its population. 

Her concerned cousin Superman begs her to come home. “I’m worried you might never find your people,” he cloyingly says. 

Instead she finds Ruthye (Eve Ridley), an empty shell of a 13-year-old whose mom and weapon-maker dad have been killed by Krem of the Yellow Hills. Creepy Matthias Schoenaerts plays the punk-rock baddie, a vague and breathy human trafficker who looks like Vladimir Putin got too many face piercings one night after a lot of Stolichnaya.

Inexplicably mature Ruthye asks Supergirl for help to kill Krem. Uninterested Kara only enlists after Krem shoots a toxic dart at her beloved dog Krypto. The pooch has only got three days to live and Kara needs to secure the antidote. 

The boring (but short!) film is based on the comic book “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow,” so I can’t totally fault screenwriter Ana Nogueira for her lack of originality. But could somebody please find me the antidote for movies about finding the antidote? 

Kara meets some weirdos along the way. Pseudo-supporting characters such as Lobo (Jason Momoa giving the only performance he knows how to do), a painted-faced motorcycle thug, and a little monkey alien who works on a space bus (voiced by Seth Rogen), will earn dismissive comparisons to “Mad Max” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Rightly so.

The only compelling performance here is Alcock’s. Her personality, both petulant and lovable, shines through this predictable march toward the obvious like the yellow sun that gives Supergirl her power.   

What Alcock cannot save with her natural pluck are the perfunctory fights.

The action in Gillespie’s movie is all staged in a manner that was once fun and novel, but has become repetitive and annoying, like Labubus or 67. 

Time and again, Supergirl swiftly KOs hordes of enemies all by herself as a counterintuitive rock song plays in the background. “Guardians” and “Deadpool” have done a lot of that, and it’s just one more way in which “Supergirl” feels like a ripoff. 

During one battle scene, the peppy tune is “The Middle” (“It just takes some time!”) by Jimmy Eat World.    

Funny choice, that.

I’m sure new DC honchos James Gunn and Peter Safran, who are surely feeling the pressure, sing it often.

“Everything, everything will be just fine! Everything, everything will be alright, all right!”