A & E

Curiosity, graceful CGI and a fresh take on a beloved superhero franchise will sweep "Superman Returns" to blockbuster returns.

Though most of us haven't seen the central character on a big screen since the then-very frayed franchise tailed off 19 years ago, the new film suggests that only five years have passed.

Superman (Brandon Routh, who could pass as the son of his late predecessor, Christopher Reeve) abandoned everyone for five years while on a self-imposed sabbatical from both Metropolis and Smallville.

Elderly adoptive mother Martha Kent (Eva Marie Saint), who seems to have no other human contact, tolerated his absence as an indulgent mom might. Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) wiled the years winning a Pulitzer Prize for her editorial, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman." Nope, we don't get a morsel of what Lois has dished.

She lives with her beau, fellow reporter Richard White (James Marsden), who is the nephew of Daily Planet editor Perry White (Frank Langella). But the film strongly implies that her strangely strong 5-year-old son Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu) is the offspring of Superman. Or was it Clark?

The screenplay by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris thereby renders Superman a deadbeat dad, albeit a well-meaning one who at one point hides soulfully outside Lois' home watching her tend to her kid and her fella.

Like all true outsiders, Supe must settle for friend-of-the-family status.

Wait a minute. Superman and Clark vanished for the same five years, and still no one ... ?

Clark gets his old job back. He and Lois look so young, though, that it makes little sense that photographer Jimmy Olsen (Sam Huntington) calls Clark "Mr. Kent." The guys frequent a bar tended by Bo (Jack Larson, who played Jimmy on the '50s TV series).

As in the past, Superman must contend with arch foe Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), freshly sprung from prison by gullible dying heiress Gertrude Vanderworth (Noel Neill, who was Lois in the '50s).

Why Clark works at the Planet at all in 2006 -- the year shown under a masthead -- isn't clear because his role as Superman consumes his life and leaves him not time for reporting.

Using a much lower-wattage cast than the 1978 movie, "Superman Returns" benefits from Spacey's spirited menace. It's not clear, though, how to interpret several shots of girlfriend Kitty (Parker Posey) observing his sadism.

It's good to see Saint, underused by modern filmmakers. The voice and visage of the late Marlon Brando as Superman's dad, Joe-El, are recycled here, but it does not truly constitute a second shared credit with Saint, his "On the Waterfront" co-star.

Nor do a "death" and resurrection in "Superman Returns" amount to a Christian metaphor, though some will look for one.

At two hours and 34 minutes, the picture is bloated. Hollywood, in its quest for sci-fi epics, has lost its understanding that fantasy cannot withstand scrutiny in such a long form. The moment the audience has time to reflect ...

Bryan Singer's film strives for sensitivity, but for all of its busyness, it's thin, impersonal and disjointed, if painless. But then, in the modern era, who's to insist it meet the narrative standards to which earlier incarnations were held?

Opens at 10 p.m. today at some theaters; begins Wednesday at others.

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"Superman" originated as a comic strip written by Cleveland-born Jerry Siegel (1914-1996) and illustrated by Joe Shuster (1914-1992), a Toronto native who moved to Toledo, Ohio, at age 9.

Siegel and Shuster were working for DC-National when they sold the idea of Superman, which premiered as a comic in 1939. Their heroic superhuman man of steel was born on the planet Krypton and packed off to earth by his father Jor-El just before Krypton's destruction.

Superman's rocket landed in rural Smallville, where Jonathan and Martha Kent adopted the baby and gave him the name Clark Kent.

As a young man Clark moved alone to Metropolis, where editor Perry White hired him as a news reporter for the Daily Planet. Clark's two closest friends were reporter Lois Lane, his sole rival for big stories, and cub photographer Jimmy Olsen.

Though smitten with Superman, Lois sometimes was disdainful of Clark despite recurring suspicions that he and Superman were one.

Once the strip came to life on film, it became exceptionally incredible that no one noticed -- at least not with any sustained attention -- that Clark was Superman, especially since they were built and moved identically and even had identical voices. The sole distinguishing characteristic, beyond Superman's caped outfit, was Clark's horn-rimmed glasses.

Among the many versions of and variations on "Superman," the most notable are:

• "Superman" (1941-43), a series of 17 cartoon shorts in which Superman was voiced by Bud Collyer, who became more famous later as the host of TV's "Beat the Clock."

• "The Adventures of Superman" (1948), a 15-chapter serial starring Kirk Alyn.

• "Atom Man vs. Superman" (1950), the second and final 15-chapter serial with Alyn. It released just as TV was killing off the production of such Saturday-matinee cliffhangers.

• "Superman and the Mole-Men" (1951), a spooky, low-budget, hour-long feature film with George Reeves that was released to moviehouses on double bills. Reeves had played Stuart Tarleton in "Gone With the Wind" (1939) and was featured prominently in dozens of 1940s movies. He never quite caught on as a leading man.

• "The Adventures of Superman" (1952-58) was a 104-episode half-hour TV series that morphed dramatically over its six seasons from a mature, film-noirish crime series to a comical kiddie show with silly villains. The last two episodes of the first season were a cut-down and chopped-in-two version of "Superman and the Mole-Men," retitled "The Unknown People."

• "Superman: The Movie" (1978) was the first of the latterday American big-screen reincarnations with state-of-the-art special effects. It starred Christopher Reeve, whose surname bore a coincidental similarity to the stage name of his predecessor.

• "Superman II" (1980), "Superman III" (1983) and "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace" (1987), all with Reeve.

• "Superman" (1987), an Indian full-length feature starring Puneet Issar.

• "Superman" (1988), a half-hour animated TV series that lasted for 26 episodes. Beau Weaver voiced Superman.

• "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" (1993-97), a TV series with Dean Cain.

• "Smallville: Superman in the Early Years" (2001-present), a TV series with Tom Welling.

• "Superman Lives" never happened. Jon Peters planned to produce and Tim Burton to direct a revival of the series with Nicolas Cage in the title role. Burton scouted locations in Pittsburgh early in 1998, but, citing an escalating budget, Warner Bros. yanked the plug in mid-1998. Warners, which made the whole Reeve series, also did the new "Superman Returns," with Peters as producer.

Sources include the Internet Movie DataBase and "Superman: Serial to Cereal" by Gary Grossman.

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