Listen, is this movie good? No. But did I like it? Yes. I enjoyed it just ever so slightly more than I didn’t, so that’s why I give it the positive score. Maybe that’s because I went in with such low expectations. I mean, this movie has a pretty bad reputation as being one of the worst comic book movies ever made. As someone who literally watched Superman III yesterday, I can very confidently say that I’d much rather watch this because it actually has things going for it. There are a plethora of issues, but I’ll defend myself first before the pitchforks come out.

For one, Helen Slater was genuinely great in the role of Supergirl. She was very charming, and I liked how she acted once she arrived on Earth, as it felt very natural. She doesn’t get too many moments to show off truly deep emotional depth, but when she does, she does a pretty good job. Even though I liked this movie, the acting was terrible, and she was honestly the one standout performance amongst everyone else.

For being tied to the Christopher Reeve’s films, I was very glad that this carried on the tradition of having an excellent score. Obviously, nothing can and will ever top John Williams’ score for the original for me, but Jerry Goldsmith did a fantastic job of capturing that similar whimsical feeling. The “Flying Ballet” track for the flying sequences (which were easily the best scenes) was definitely my favorite, but everything else was great too. It is kind of a shame that it wasn’t in a better movie, though.

The production was outstanding, which was easily the most surprising part of the whole film to me. I had already heard good things about the score, but since this movie has a terrible reputation, I expected terrible production quality as well, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case. The sets are all awesome, especially the main setpiece at the very beginning and towards the end. I thought they were really interesting and didn’t feel like sets, but actual places. The special effects were also great and up to the standard of Reeve’s movies, too.

And even if you hate this movie, you have to acknowledge and respect it for really being the first attempt at making an interconnected superhero universe. As far as my knowledge goes, nothing had been done like this before, so it was cool to see how this connected with the other Superman movies. There were definitely some random, unneeded connections that felt like gigantic coincidences, but again, nothing had been done like this before.

For my one thing that I liked for the most part, but wished was better, would have to be the romance. There were hints of a great romance subplot with Supergirl here, but it was with some random dude who seemed to be a bit older than her, which was a bit odd. I know it plays into the plot with why the guy likes her, but it was still pretty weird, to be honest.

Now it’s time for all the issues, and to be honest, they were all pretty obvious. The first one I’ll talk about is the story itself. It’s unfocused and in no hurry at all, which I know seems hypocritical of me to say because I criticized Superman III for the exact same reason, but again, Superman III didn’t have any hints of the magic of the first two movies like this did, at least in my opinion. Supergirl goes to Earth to save her people, but for some reason, she goes on a side journey right after she arrives that has to do with education, and it felt very random and out of place for a superhero movie. It was kind of funny, almost, as Supergirl clearly wasn’t in any hurry to save her people.

As I already touched upon, the acting is also really bad, and the dialogue is somehow even worse and laughable at times. “Our lights will grow dim and the very air we breathe so thin.” Yep, that was an actual line of dialogue that somehow made it all the way through production, and the delivery of it made it even funnier. The acting in general just made it really hard to connect, or rather, believe that any of these characters were actually real and not people in a dramatic play, with the exception of Supergirl.

The villains were also…weird. Witches? I mean, it’s better than what we got in Superman III (that just screamed “Who even cares about the villain(s)?”), but the main villains’ ways of being evil here were just dumb and not grand enough for a comic book movie. They were also quite annoying, too. I guess they just put in zero effort with the villains after Superman II for some reason.

So yeah, Supergirl can safely go alongside Mortal Kombat: Annihilation into the “guilty pleasure” list of movies for me. Not good, but amusing and entertaining.