SUPERBOB

Superbob - based on a 2009 short of the same name - is a low budget, British, Civil Servant Superhero film.

Directed by Jon Drever, and starring and co-written by comedian, actor, writer and podcaster Brett Goldstein, follows former postman Robert Kenner, who after being hit by a meteorite develops super human powers, thus becoming the titular Superbob.

This is a superhero film like you will not have seen before. The majority of the film is set in and around Peckham and doesn’t actually see Bob do a whole lot of superhero-ing. Instead it prefers to focus on the man, not the hero. We follow Bob going about his day-to-day business, dealing with energy companies, preparing for a date, and visiting his mum.

Bob is not your typical superhero. He is mild mannered, awkward, and a little dull, and the film manages to wring a lot of comedy out of this premise. Superbob is consistently funny throughout. Whether it’s pastiching American action films, or the bureaucracy of the civil service, the filmmakers manage to peel back the superhero genre to its bare bones, and examine the reality of what being a Superhero in the modern world would look like.

Where the film really excels though, is in the smaller, sweeter moments. A standout example of this is scene in which Bob finds himself reluctantly dancing with Natalia Tena’s Doris, and is a moment which is a masterclass of showing the audience what they need to know, without explicitly telling them. It is a quiet moment, almost blink and you miss it, but it is sublimely effective and effortlessly romantic. It is a moment that you rarely get in cinema. One which does what it needs to do with subtlety, but which will stay with you long after the final credits role.

Superbob is triumphantly British in its approach, and in its comedy, and this makes it stand out against the monoliths of Marvel and DC.

We have seen a lot of Superhero films in the last decade which have big action, and bigger budgets, but, while I am a big fan of a lot of these movies, lack one thing that Superbob has in abundance.

And that’s its heart.

Because when you don’t have a $200,000,000 budget it forces you to focus on the story. And there, and only there, can you create something as unique, and as wonderful, as Superbob.