Thursday new releases: 17 July 2025

Superman, Bride Hard, Universal Language and Smurfs are all in cinemas

As promised, here are the films that would have been featured here on Monday but were held over because we were making At the Movies for RNZ yesterday. Also, contains bonus Smurfs.

The full show is available for download/streaming here and listening is the preferred method of absorbing these reviews as the audio clips really add to the stories I am trying tell. And the editor-in-chief and I checked it on the commute in to work this morning and we can confirm that it came out really well.

If you want to listen along with the radio audience, you’ll have to wait until Sunday afternoon when it plays as part of Culture 101.

Superman

While I appreciated the new tone that Gunn is going for, I couldn’t help feeling that this Superman can fly because he’s a bit of a lightweight and Gunn himself is forced, whenever he wants the audience to actually feel something, to go back to John Williams’ famous Superman fanfare. This isn’t emotion, its nostalgia, and it’s a trick that’s pulled a lot in the new Jurassic World film, too.

In fact, almost all the characters are benefitting greatly from what the audience is already bringing into the cinema with them, rather than what’s on the page. This goes double for the female characters – Luthor’s girlfriend Eve Teschmacher, played by Sara Sampaio especially – who are seriously short-changed and, frankly, not shown very much respect.

Bride Hard

This is clearly a vehicle for Ms. Wilson, the Australian comic performer who made her name testing the limits of screen vulgarity in wedding-themed films like Bridesmaids and A Few Best Men, and between her and her stunt double she proves game for the action side of things. Unfortunately, the script by Sheina Steinberg and whatever improvisational efforts that are made by the cast, don’t find any depth in the relationships and if there’s no depth then the humour just bobs around on the surface hoping to make landfall somewhere before it sinks.

Universal Language

Universal Language could only have emerged from an ultra-specific location, the extraordinary noggin of Matthew Rankin, but that uniqueness is what makes it so precious. Filmmakers around the world should take the lesson from this, that any effort you make trying to please an audience and not trying to work out what is uniquely you, is wasted effort.

I’m not going to pretend that Universal Language is for everyone – although the Audience Award at Cannes and 24 other wins around the world might suggest otherwise – and I feel sure that this isn’t the kind of film you wander into because the Superman session was sold out, but if this sort of thing sounds like you, then it will be very you. It was for me.

Universal Language was great. Probably in my top ten of the year, but extremely hard to describe.

Smurfs

This new reboot of the formidable Belgian franchise actually appeared in local cinemas a couple of weeks ago because of our school holiday schedule but it is being released internationally this week.

I was very fond of the second film in the Neil Patrick Harris series which came out in 2013 (Katy Perry was the pop star who voiced Smurfette in those days) so I didn’t have an automatic aversion to this new version as I may have done.

Adding to that, director Chris Miller being responsible for Puss in Boots (another favourite) and I was primed to enjoy this, despite the screening starting at 9.30am on a Sunday morning.

Smurfs benefits from treating the little blue critters as the main characters in their own story rather than an annoying supporting cast and also from committing to an excellent array of voice talent: John Goodman as Papa Smurf, Nick Offerman as Papa’s brother Ken (!) and Octavia Spencer, Natasha Lyonne, and Sandra Oh also featuring. Your tolerance for James Corden will be tested by his appearance as the lead, No Name Smurf. He also is given a musical number, as is Rihanna (more understandably) as Smurfette.

The story is about one of four magic books needed to control the universe being hidden in the Smurf village and the efforts to keep it out of the hands of the villainous wizard Razamel and his brother Gargamel (both voiced by JP Karliak).

There’s a chase around various global locations courtesy of some kind of magic portal — our gang visit Paris, Outback Australia and Germany. It’s all very inoffensive and sometimes quite endearing, although it didn’t make me cry like The Smurfs 2.