Forget the critics, get behind new 'sumptuously absurd' film

Call it the Mickey Spillane Syndrome.

Something about wearing a trench coat and fedora makes you want to narrate your life with really cheesy metaphors.

"My city, I cannot deny her. My city screams. She is my mother. She is my lover. And I am her Spirit."

OK, forget the obvious Oedipal implications of a city being both his mother and his lover. Cut the Spirit some slack. It's hard to compose even florid prose while jumping from rooftop to rooftop - especially dressed like you're auditioning for the role of Sky Masterson in "Guys and Dolls."

Spider-Man, at least, gets to wear his leotards.

The Spirit takes quite a beating these days. Of course, that's nothing new. If you're familiar at all with the original comic book created by industry icon Will Eisner in 1940, you know it's a restful adventure when the Spirit isn't beaten to a bloody pulp within the first eight panels.

Now that he has made the transition from the printed page to the silver screen, however, his humiliation is worse. Rather than having his clock cleaned by the usual assortment of mugs, pugs and thugs, he's being fried, dyed and laid to the side by nerds.

Nerds!

And they're the worst nerds of all - the ones who write for newspapers and the Internet. Nebbishy film critics (paid and unpaid) are sniffing their asthma inhalers and proclaiming "The Spirit: My City Screams" an unqualified train wreck of a movie. Audiences apparently agree.

After I saw the movie last week, a gaggle of nerds gathered afterward and said they started a drinking game during the movie. Every time they saw a superhero movie cliche, they said, they took a swig of Diet Pepsi. (Sheesh, I can't believe the Spirit is trashed up by a bunch of guys who drink Diet Pepsi.)

They miss the point. They all miss the point.

Ironically, the movie's director, Frank Miller, has only himself to blame. As a comic book artist and writer, Miller severely changed the way the general public (and even nerds) view superheroes with his 1986 graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns."

Up until then, most people viewed superhero comics as an essentially juvenile medium. Actor Adam West all but elbowed viewers in the ribs to make sure they knew he wasn't taking himself seriously as Batman. And who can forget Gene Hackman's campy turn as Lex Luthor in the Superman movies?

Miller changed the universe - at least the comic book universe - forever with "The Dark Knight Returns." The gritty tale of an aging and morally ambiguous Batman coming out of retirement raised a superhero story to the level of literature. From then on, people generally wanted their superheroes dark, mature and (as much as possible) realistic.

Hold the cheese.

"The Watchmen" by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, also published in 1986, had a similar effect on the genre. Still, it was "The Dark Knight" that captured the public's imagination and led to the proliferation of superhero movies over the past 20 years.

Comics suddenly became legitimate fodder for movies. A lot of those movies flat-out stunk on ice. Remember Robin Williams as Popeye? Brooke Shields as Brenda Starr? Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy? Whatever that thing was as Howard the Duck? If not, count yourself lucky for missing the movies or thank God for repressed memories.

OK, I actually kind of liked the Brenda Starr and Dick Tracy movies. At least, I appreciated what the directors were trying to do. They tried to directly, faithfully and accurately translate the comic strip experience to the screen. "Dick Tracy" director Warren Beatty attempted this by limiting the number of colors he used to the same palate as the comic strip's creator Chester Gould.

"Brenda Starr" director Robert Ellis Miller used the rather wiggy plot device of having an assistant for comic strip creator Dale Messick get pulled into the strip itself. More-acclaimed director Ang Lee actually tried to incorporate comic book panels on the screen in his 2003 movie adaptation of "The Hulk."

Not the most successful experiments, but hey, points for trying.

And for my money, they're nobler than boiler-plate efforts like last summer's "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk." Now those movies were true cliches - classic characters sandwiched into what currently passes for realism and believability in the public mind.

Of course, that mind has been molded by the last 15 or so years of superhero movies. Those movies grapple to find some sort of passable explanation why a grown man would respond to his parents' death by running around dressed as a giant bat.

"The Spirit" takes believability out into the alley and pounds it (literally) senseless. That's the glory of it. That's what makes it better than, say, the last Indiana Jones movie - and that God-awful scene where Jones survives an atomic explosion.

It was God-awful because director Steven Spielberg tried to ground his movie by keeping at least one foot in the real world. So Jones surviving the explosion was completely ridiculous.

By contrast, Miller doesn't shy away from the absurdity and surreality of his material. He revels in it. Thus, anything is possible. It's campy, but not in the same way Adam West portrayed Batman in the 1960s.

It's not parody either. How can you truly parody something that never really took itself seriously in the first place? Eisner's original Spirit stories were a deliciously bizarre blend of crime, horror, sex and comedy. The tales only made sense in the weird universe Eisner created.

The same is true with Miller's film. It is gloriously, sumptuously absurd. Mark my words: It will be a cult classic in 10 years. You won't find the representational in the abstract. So don't question why everyone dresses like it's 1940 but uses computers. Forget the corny dialog straight out of a hard-boiled dime novel.

And certainly don't go expecting the Dark Knight's treatise on morality or Spider-Man's indy film angst. That would be like staring at a Jackson Pollock painting and expecting to see a 3-D sailboat.

'THE SPIRIT'

*(Ebert) ***(Henderson)

The Spirit …………. Gabriel Macht

The Octopus .. Samuel L. Jackson

Sand Saref ………….. Eva Mendes

Silken Floss .. Scarlett Johansson

Lorelei ………………….. Jaime King

Ellen ……………….. Sarah Paulson

Commissioner Dolan .. Dan Lauria

Plaster of Paris ………… Paz Vega

Lionsgate presents a film written and directed by Frank Miller, based on the comic book series by Will Eisner.

Running time: 102 minutes.

RATED: PG-13 (for intense sequences of stylized violence and action, some sexual content and brief nudity).

PLAYING AT: Regal Ninth Street 4 Cinemas.