Friends who know I review movies have asked me about Superman Returns. "It’s OK," I tell them. "Only OK?" they say. Yep, that’s it. No magic, no thrills, just OK. You won’t feel as if the theater took your money under false pretenses, but you won’t be salivating for the video release either -- unless it comes out on HD DVD, a format that, because it’s new, can get away with releasing some garbage.

The original "modern" Superman movie, directed by Richard Donner in 1978, is a lot of fun, with thrills aplenty. Although its special effects are now dated, Superman can still make me believe in its hero -- not to mention Lois Lane, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and arch-villain Lex Luthor. Superman Returns doesn’t make me believe in anything.

Superman (Brandon Routh) has been away for five years, viewing the ruins of his home planet, Krypton. Because he can leap tall buildings in a single bound and be on the other side of the world faster than you can say "cartel," one wonders why this expedition took him so long. While he’s been gone, Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has married Perry White’s nephew, Richard White (James Marsden), and has had a child. Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has been sprung from prison and has hatched yet another plot to control the world. He has also found some kryptonite, the only substance that can subdue Superman.

Superman still has feelings for Lois -- no matter that he ran out on her for five years. But Lois, no longer the feisty reporter played by Margot Kidder in 1978, is now a lovely, insipid clone. Superman is plagued with angst, feeling he must choose between Lois and the rest of the world, to which he is a champion -- nay, a god. Bryan Singer, now the most overrated director in the movie business, broadcast that, as in the two X-Men movies he directed, he would develop Superman’s character to make this film different from the rest of the franchise, and, as in X-Men and X2, he fails to deliver on his promise. In particular, he fails to develop Lois’s son, Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu), whose father, we soon find out, is actually Superman, though no one actually says so. That might have been an interesting plot point, but although Jason does destroy a piano to save his mom, mostly all the poor kid gets to do is sit around and stare with big eyes, sort of like a "good" Damien.

Much has been made of Brandon Routh’s physical resemblance to the Superman of the 1978 film and its three sequels, Christopher Reeve. Perhaps, but the resemblance stops there. Certain actors have an almost indefinable charisma, sometimes only in certain roles, and Reeve had it as Superman. Routh does not. In fact, the only other actor who has come close to Reeve is Dean Cain, in TV’s Lois and Clark. Routh seems like a boy in a man’s role, just as Bosworth, as Lois, seems like a girl in a woman’s role.

The casting mistakes don’t stop there. Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) is no longer an amiable, wisecracking young upstart, but has been blanded out to be an irritating know-it-all wimp. Then there’s Lex Luthor. Kevin Spacey plays Luthor with relish, but as the script portrays him, Luthor is not all that menacing when he doesn’t have a chunk of kryptonite in hand. Moreover, he’s not even clever, as in Gene Hackman’s 1978 portrayal, but just plain stupid. He’s going to build a new continent in the Atlantic to replace Northeast America, but it’s so mountainous, barren, and threatening that only abominable snowmen might want to take up residence there.

Toward the end, Superman Returns revs up in a long action sequence that got my blood pounding a bit -- but it’s followed by a moribund 20-minute coda that finally gives us a chance to identify Superman’s chip off the old block. Does it? Only sorta.

Superman had humor, wit, action, adventure, excitement, and sparkling sets and special effects. Superman Returns is sour, dark in plot and lighting, and no fun at all. See it only to remind yourself how great the first one was. Spacey, Bosworth, and Marsden will move on to better things. Brandon Routh had better not give up his night job.

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