SUPER/MAN: THE CHRISTOPHER REEVE STORY
(directors: Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui; screenwriter: Peter Ettedgui; cinematographer: Brett Wiley; editor: Otto Burnham; music: Ilan Eshkeri; cast: Christopher Reeve, Amanda Reeve, Matthew Reeve, Will Reeve, Gae Sexton, Dana Morosini, Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels, Whoopi Goldberg, John Kerry, Steven Kirshblum, Susan Sarandon; Runtime: 106; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Ian Bonhôte, Robert Ford, Lizzie Gillett; Passion Pictures; 2024)
“A candid documentary that’s well-made and compelling.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Co-directors, the Swiss filmmaker Ian Bonhôte (“McQueen”/”Rising Phoenix”) and Peter Ettedgui (“McQueen”/”Rising Phoenix”), are the talented filmmakers of the inspirational and deeply moving documentary on the actor who successfully played Superman on the Big Screen. In 1995 he became paralyzed after a horse fall in a steeplechase competition, ending his career as a superhero. He then became an activist for spinal cord injuries and started in 1996 a foundation for spinal cord injuries. He would die at age 52 in 2004.
The filmmakers are given by Chris’s adult 3 children complete access to his life story.
We learn about him through archive footage, home movies, interviews with his family, friends and fellow actors, through his disapproving college professor father and the two women in his life (his live-in Brit model girlfriend Gae Sexton and his actress-singer wife Dana Morowski-who died in 2006). Gae gave him two children.
Chris was born in NYC and was raised in Princeton, N.J.. He’s shown as a bright guy, a good guy, someone passionate about life, committed to his family and blessed with a good sense of humor.
It’s a candid documentary that’s well-made and compelling.
We learn the handsome Chris studied to be a stage actor, graduated from Cornell and in 1973 attended Julliard, shot two superb Superman films in 1977 and 1978, and later was forced through his contract obligations to make 2 inferior Superman films, wrote his autobiography Still Me in 1998, was after the accident a roommate of Robin Williams, and was wheelchair bound with a respirator.
After the tragedy, Chris struggled to overcome this dark period in his life and eventually did.
It played at the Sundance Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 2/5/2024 GRADE: A-