Movie review: Supergirl might just be the second-best Star Wars movie this summer

Kara has let herself go, much like Thor in the space between Infinity War and Endgame. Happily inebriated, she has no interest in helping Ruthye, a 13-year-old on a quest for vengeance on behalf of her murdered family.

That is, until Ruthye’s nemesis shoots an arrow that poisons Krypto, Kara’s space dog. Kara is murderously upset about this. (Your Honour, my client pleads the John Wick defence.) She needs to track down the baddie, who, in an unusual choice of statement piece, is wearing the poison’s antidote on a chain around his neck.

The evil-doer is played by Matthias Schoenaerts and his name is Krem. Look it up, and you’ll find that it’s a musical instrument from Malaysia, a character in the video game Dragon Age, another from Star Trek, and a TV station in Spokane, KREM.

I think it sounds like a cheese, or maybe a doughnut. For the purposes of Supergirl, it’s a villain with no redeeming characteristics and only a few unredeeming ones, such as occasionally speaking his dialogue in a squeaky-mocking tone and having far too much fun being nasty.

That second quality also fits Lobo (Jason Momoa), but that’s OK in a second-tier scruffy nice guy/ne’er-do-well. (Think Han Solo.) The alpha villain needs to have more going on than a face full of studs and an attitude. He seems to be evil purely because it’s what the movie needs.

But you get what you get. Kara and Ruthye — the actress is Eve Ridley, which would make a badass character name in its own right — team up to follow Krem to the ends of the universe, or at least the film’s modest 107 minutes.

Along the way, director Craig Gillespie doles out a bit of backstory, including Supergirl’s arrival on Earth (David Corenswet’s Superman gets little more than a cameo here) and her departure from the charred remains of Krypton, which even in its attenuated state proves dangerous to its inhabitants, in the way that Earth’s natural radon gas is harmful to humans.

There’s not much more to keep your attention as the story unfurls. Gillespie has made some good movies — check out Lars and the Real Girl with Ryan Gosling, or I Tonya — but he’s never helmed a superhero picture, and it shows.

Supergirl’s action setpieces are so choppy as to be almost unwatchable. What I wouldn’t give for the director to shoot conversations as if they were fight scenes, and fight scenes as if they were conversations.

He occasionally slows things down — like REALLY slows them down into slo-mo — but with some egregious needle drops that add to the Guardians of the Galaxy feeling, like a cover of Jimmy Eat World’s The Middle. (“Everything, everything’ll be alright, alright…”) Good luck getting that yellow-sun masterpiece out of your head.

Supergirl isn’t a terrible movie, and Alcock really nails the couldn’t-care-less sloppiness of a hero who, rather than let herself go, never really wanted the job in the first place. And congrats to the studio for resisting the urge to glam her up. But as a superhero tale (or even as a Star Wars one), it’s a little thin and scattered. But it at least has the benefit of taking place not in a galaxy far, far away, but right here at home.

Supergirl opens June 26 in theatres.

3 stars out of 5