REVIEW: Supergirl - enjoyable nonsense with a cracking ending

Supergirl, as it turns out, is a rude and grumpy stropper, a heavy drinker prone to falling asleep on the loo with her trousers around her ankles.

Which, of course, makes her instantly far more endearing than your average Superhero – and vastly more interesting.

It’s safe to say that she’s got issues and she’s not handling them awfully well, living in squalor in a stupor…. until courageous alien teenager Ruthye Marye Knoll (great from Eve Ridley) helps her find her mojo

Ruthye, intent on revenge, tracks down Supergirl after the super evil Krem of the Yellow Hills (could they really not have given him a slightly less silly name?) murders her parents and brother.

Supergirl really can’t be bothered either way to start with, but then lowlife Krem, hardly the Krem de la crème, poisons her beloved dog – and that’s when she finally sets to, desperate to track down Krem and so secure the antidote before three days are up and her dog expires.

Supergirl’s mission kind of matches up with Ruthye’s quest for vengeance. And so off they go.

The plot is hampered from time by ponderous flashbacks in a suitably-obscure language (thank goodness for the subtitles) bit by bit giving us Supergirl’s back story, slowly explaining quite why she’s in the slump she’s in. Meanwhile, her cousin Superman keeps video-calling her, trying to bring her back down to earth. Literally.

And he’s got a point. We are in a completely alien world full of completely alien and ugly creatures. There is plenty of imagination and invention here, for sure, but in a world so unfamiliar, at times it’s awfully difficult to care too much about what’s actually happening.

And it’s the same with the biffing. There is endless fighting, but when you don’t really know who is capable of what in a world where literally anything might happen, you start to feel that the whole film is lacking the sense of jeopardy it really does need.

But it comes together nicely for a cracking ending which actually packs a fair old emotional punch. Plus maybe the best reason for watching Supergirl is Supergirl herself, a lovely, appealing, quirky performance from Milly Alcock, with more than a touch of a young Meg Ryan about her in all her expressiveness.

Superheroes are so often so deadly dull. Alcock’s Supergirl is anything but.