SuperFly movie review & film summary (2018)

Director X’s remake of “SuperFly” makes the title adjective one word but generally sticks to the Fenty’s story. Now and then, there is a minor bend in the road plotwise—a character is used for a different purpose, for example, and there are more villains to combat. But this is mostly a faithful adaptation, bigger yet not better. There’s far more violence in this iteration of “SuperFly” and it has a budget Parks and company couldn’t match in their wildest dreams. Yet despite all its occasionally entertaining bluster and '90s-era crime movie braggadocio, this is a surprisingly shallow take on a much more cagey and amoral original. Don’t get me wrong: The movie isn’t bad. In fact, it’s quite watchable despite being at least 20 minutes too long. But if I wanted what this movie is selling, I could have stayed home and watched “Belly” or “New Jack City,” both of which are better, more visually arresting and have a clearer sense of place regarding their respective settings.

Coincidentally, the movie that may have kicked off the era of movies like the aforementioned ones “SuperFly” evokes is 1990’s “The Return of SuperFly.” That film starred soap opera veteran Nathan Purdee as Priest, whose exploits were once again buoyed by Curtis Mayfield’s score. Mayfield teamed up with rappers like Ice-T, creating a torch-passing of sorts from which we can draw a straight line to this film’s hip hop heavy soundtrack by Future. Now, Future is no Curtis Mayfield, and unlike Mayfield’s “Super Fly” album, his music will not drastically change the way films employ songs. However, Sony’s pairing of a successful musician with a visual filmmaker is a clear indication that they’re trying to recapture the lightning in the bottle that beget the original film. So, comparisons between the two films are fair game.

Perhaps my expectations were set too high, especially where the visuals were concerned. Director X is a veteran of music videos, many of which have fantastic and distinctive looks, textures and editing techniques. By comparison, “SuperFly” is visually flat, relying too much on oft-repeated motifs of rap videos rather than the ingenuity I expected. By the fourth time someone “made it rain” around strippers or executed a gory shoot-out, I gave up on potentially seeing something new. 

Additionally, the city of Atlanta is presented as a series of shorthand shots designed for people who either live there or have spent a lot of time visiting. Sure, we get landmarks and the famous places the intended audience knows and loves, but they never resonate with the characters the way their home city should. It feels like the viewer is in a glass-bottom boat, free to ogle the scenery without the benefit of experiencing it firsthand.