Last summer, director Christopher Nolan reinvigorated the BATMAN legend with a character-driven thrill-ride chock full of surprises and endless invention, but the same can’t be said of Bryan Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS, which feels like a retread for much of its lethargic and bloated running-time. I can’t say this was a major disappointment since my expectations going in were modest at best, but this thing was sooo shockingly mundane; nothing in this movie stirs up much excitement or comes close to matching the awe and wonder Richard Donner’s film fashioned so exhuberantly.

With few exceptions, the casting is disastrous: Bosworth takes the plucky Lois Lane and imbues her with the sum energy derived from digesting a handful of sleeping pills; Spacey’s Luthor, while more faithful to the source material than previous screen versions, isn’t half as memorable as Gene Hackman’s playful take on the character, and Frank Langella is sooo lackluster a Perry White I’m not even sure he was awake when his scenes were shot. As for Routh, he improved as the film progressed, but he still looks more like Superboy (or, more precisely, RUSHMORE’s Max Fischer) than the Man of Steel. (His adolescent looks and awkward first attempts to mimic Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent are painful to watch)

The missteps in casting could have been glossed over if the film delivered some truly jaw-dropping scenes of Super-derring-do, but there’s little suspense or excitement to the action set-pieces that seem regurgitated from previous films, and the special-effects — the one area it was reasonable to expect improvement in leaps and bounds — are competent but unambitious and not that big an upgrade from what Donner achieved in 1978. In fact, director Bryan Singer, who did such a fine job with the first two X-MEN films, seems so intent on capturing the style of the Donner classic that he leaves little of his own imprint on SUPERMAN RETURNS. SUPERMAN RETURNS most reminds me of Tim Burton’s “re-imagining” of PLANET OF THE APES; each had heaps of money lavished on them, but both are completely lifeless. And since when did Clark Kent wear glasses as a young boy??

Ultimately, this new SUPERMAN may appeal more to those who didn’t grow up with the Christopher Reeve movies, but at 2 1/2 hours, it may be too slow to become the smash Warner was hoping for; it certainly won’t rule the box-office for 13 consecutive weeks as the 1978 original did. In the end, it’s ironic the filmmakers chose to feature the song “Heart and Soul” when SUPERMAN RETURNS had neither.