Supergirl is a satisfactory movie. While it has a few interesting ideas, embraces oddball science fiction elements, features a fine villain, has action sequences with few noticeable moments, and has a fairly hookful story, the film lacks depth and dedication, making it no more than a satisfactory experience.
Opening with Supergirl in her spacecraft house that looks like a messy teenage girl's bedroom, she receives a video call from her cousin Superman, calling from Earth. This establishes that Supergirl has been spending a lot of time in interstellar space rather than on Earth, which leads her cousin to worry she's not gonna find "her people". Before the movie's events, Supergirl's entire home planet, Krypton, was destroyed, but she managed to escape before its total destruction. After landing on Earth, she first meets her cousin, who arrived there many years earlier. While the movie doesn't directly state this, it is probably why Supergirl hasn't found "her people": she lost the only home she ever knew.
This is just one way the movie makes its ideas more meaningful than just sparks. Before the journey, Supergirl doesn't want a home or to try to find her people, but after the journey, she decides to stay on Earth and see it as her new home. Supergirl's story arc is more than a spark, as by the end of her arc, the ideas from the beginning of the movie, where she had no home, weren't just brought up or briefly shown, and there was elaboration beyond that. Through just being on the journey, Supergirl makes the decision by the end to accept Earth as her home. This idea goes beyond being introduced or mentioned only once or twice.
The film's journey follows Supergirl and a girl named Ruthye as they travel to find the deeply wicked and uncanny villain Krem of the Yellow Hills. For Supergirl, Krem poisoned her puppy Krypto, and Krem also carries the poison’s cure. For Ruthye, it's to get revenge for her family, which was murdered by Krem. Supergirl knows that killing people won't take pain away. Throughout the film, she stops Ruthye and others from trying to kill Krem. Another example is how the movie presents its ideas on Supergirl finding her home.
Supergirl herself is fun to watch because she feels human. The script and Milly Alcock’s performance don’t overexaggerate the character’s drunken personality (even though the visuals do), and Alcock is authentic, as there’s this quietness to her even though she’s a mess.
Krem isn’t highly complex, but he doesn't need to be as he still works well a driving force to push the characters. He connects with the main character and the supporting character. While he is wicked, he often makes noticeable, poetic observations that make him seem a little disgusting. His motivations for murdering Ruthye's parents are for sport, which also works well. It presents him well as an individual.
But while ideas are introduced, something about the film feels like it wasn't explored richly. While there were throughlines in the ideas, the film lacked cohesion.
The movie embraces its oddball science fiction elements by not winking at the audience when they appear on screen or making jokes about them. It presents its sci-fi elements as if the audience are the residents of the film’s fictitious universe.
The film's lighting and style have a yellowish blandness and darkness that's quite ugly. While visuals do support the character and narrative, as Supergirl acts messy and unpleasant and the style is alike, it also leaves the film’s overall complexion looking ugly and feeling elusive. It’s not gritty in a serious way or gritty in a way that’s also beautiful- this is where its elusive feeling comes from. The movie also has a tactile in-camera quality, yet it equally feels like it doesn’t. The production design is reminiscent of ruinous debris and somewhat ghetto buildings, but as if they were made of metal. The bland yellow lighting, and the overall lighting in general, affects the production design and visual style, as when it sheds its light, it blurs both.
One section of the final fight has a sequence where the camera rotates around a character in the foreground as the background, in slow motion, has vehicles being destroyed and dirt rising from the ground. Right after that, another section appears: Supergirl gets into a tank-like science fiction vehicle to lift it up and fly; the camera pushes in from an extreme long shot to a medium close-up, then pushes back out to an extreme long shot.
Supergirl is a movie that doesn’t know what it is visually, which affects the story too. Ideas are built out, not sparks, but they are still missing a sense of confidence; the whole movie does, visually and in the script. Confidence is something that allows the movie to stand with its back straight; Supergirl stands with its back bent, so all it’s trying to say is blubbered and poorly presented.
