My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Review by Adam Weeks

Ivan Reitman’s latest film, My Super Ex-Girlfriend stars Luke Wilson as Matt Saunders, an unlucky in love regular Joe who meets nerdy Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) on a train ride, and manages to get a date out of her by running after a purse snatcher. 

What Matt doesn’t realize that Jenny is in fact “G-Girl”, New York’s resident superhero, and is in fact, a bona-fide whack job when it comes to relationships. 

After the encouragement of best friend Vaughn (Rainn Wilson) & co-worker Hannah (Anna Faris), Matt manages to break off his relationship with Jenny – but she isn’t too thrilled about it, and devotes her time to ensuring that if she can’t have Matt, no one will.

While I was looking forward to seeing Reitman’s latest film, I have to admit that in much the same way as walking out of some of his later movies like Evolution & Six Days, Seven Nights, I came away more than a little disappointed with the end result. As with those two in particular, Super is all too rarely funny, and instead chooses to drag out the relationship scenes between G-Girl & Matt to such a point that by the time the actual break-up occurs (which is after all supposedly the crux of the story), there’s only around half an hour of the movie left to go!

To his credit however, Ivan always has had a knack for picking his supporting players, and he hits it again here with only one exception – there is no doubting it, the only reason that this film is even as halfway funny as it is is due to Eddie Izzard as G-Girls’ arch-nemesis Professor Bedlam, the ultra hot Anna Faris & in the biggest way, Rainn Wilson – who most people of course will know from the U.S. version of The Office. As I said before, the one exception to this rule is Wanda Sykes, who I have never found to be funny at all, and that trend continues here – it’s a one joke part, and the joke just ain’t that funny to begin with. Luke Wilson & Uma Thurman really are playing second fiddle to the others involved, and with Wilson continuing his “Every Man” shtick from seemingly his last 5 films, I have to say that along with the misfiring Thurman, the leads end up being the least successful part of the film.

If you are a huge Ivan Reitman fan, and you’re hoping this will be a return to the days of Ghostbusters or even Dave, you will most likely be disappointed with the end result of My Super Ex-Girlfriend, except for if you are willing to look past the sometimes rambling plot to the truly funny moments that feature Rainn & Eddie in particular. Outside of that, I can’t say that I’ll look back on this Ex-Girlfriend too fondly.

1.5 out of 5

My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Australian release: 20th July, 2006
Cast: Uma Thurman, Luke Wilson, Anna Faris, Rainn Wilson, Eddie Izzard
Director: Ivan Reitman
Website: Click here.