DailyView: Day 293, Movie 413

We lost another amazing director the other day. Ivan Reitman passed away in his sleep. Reitman directed such classics like Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop, Dave, Stripes, and Twins. To honor him, I found a film that he directed that I had not see. It was the 2006 My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) is just a regular guy who had unrequited feelings for his co-worker Hannah (Anna Faris), but she was in a relationship. So on the advise of his best friend Vaughn (Rainn Wilson), Matt started looking to date. Seeing an attractive woman on the subway, he approached her and asked her out. Except, someone snatched her purse. Matt took off in pursuit of the thief, eventually retrieving the purse.

The woman he approached, Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) turned out to be the super powered G-Girl in her secret identity. As they grew closer, their physical relationship built, and Jenny told him the secret.

Matt began to see though that Jenny was needy and jealous and he decided that he had to break up with her. Jenny did not take it well and began to use her powers to mess with him.

There are some funny moments of this film, but the biggest issue I had was how crazy they made Jenny. It became very over-the-top, even with the super hero stuff. It made the trope of the crazy ex-girlfriend look even worse than it is.

I will admit that I liked more of this than I thought I would. Luke Wilson is charming and his bro relationship with Rainn Wilson was funny. Uma Thurman is always ready to give it her all and Anna Faris was a good addition. There was also Eddy Izzard as the Lex Luthor-type supervillain, Professor Bedlam, aka Barry. The back story of Barry and Jenny was well done and made sense.

Yes, the movie is derailed by a lot of the sexist tropes and clichés that were on display and Jenny went psycho really quickly, but there were some decent moments in the film as well. I think the idea is sound, but could have used some more work.

RIP Ivan Reitman.