The pros of My Super Ex-Girlfriend are its premise and cast. The cons are pretty much everything else. Most of the characters are wholly unlikable, and if they weren't played by actors who have earned some goodwill with us over the years, the abhorrent nature of every character in the film would be even more glaring.

Despite being the superhero, G-Girl lacks any obviously redeeming traits. In a deleted scene shown on the DVD, it's Barry who explains to her that with her newfound powers, she's more or less obligated to become a superhero and help people, etc. She doesn't appear on board with that, but clearly winds up doing it anyway. I wish that scene had made the final cut, but I also understand why it had to go: It invites us to ask an important character question the film was hoping we wouldn't bring up: Just why is Jenny G-Girl?

Beneath the admitted novelty of actually playing with the question, "What if you dated - and then broke up with - a superhero?", My Super Ex-Girlfriend is misogynistic from start to finish. The personification of this is Rainn Wilson's character, Vaughn, who offends with every single line of dialog he speaks. The joke of course is supposed to be that he's a typical "man behaving badly", but that wears thin because no one in the film really calls him out for it. Matt (Luke Wilson) makes some comments at times, but they're always qualified by acceptance of Vaughn.

The greatest offender, of course, is Jenny herself. Initially, Uma Thurman plays her as somewhat awkward but sweet. After she cuts loose as a sexual hellcat, though, her behavior is so erratic that it conforms to only the basest paradigm of "the crazy girlfriend" trope. Going further, the supervillain Professor Bedlam is revealed to be Jenny's former bestie (and true love!) whom she callously dropped when she became popular, wounding him in the process. Jenny is therefore both incapable of having a healthy relationship with Matt (or presumably, anyone else), and she needs to be tamed by the fawning boy she cast aside in her youth.

Aside from its misogyny, My Super Ex-Girlfriend just isn't funny. The biggest gag in the film is the bit where G-Girl throws an actual shark into Hannah's (Anna Faris) apartment after finding Matt there in bed with her. Really? It's so over the top that it isn't even laughable. Instead, it goes into the realm of reinforcing the theme that all the conflict is centered around Jenny's instability. The film never strays from its "women are hysterical and crazy" premise.

One thing I did appreciate was how concisely G-Girl's origin is told. It's in one scene. I wish "real" superhero movies could do that and get on with things instead of spending an entire movie just to get us from Point A.1 to Point A.2, with Point B somewhere on the horizon for a sequel.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend was re-ranked on my Flickchart to #1410/1539