Short film written and directed by Chris Notarile and released online in 2006.
Stars of the film included Tawnya Manion as Power Girl, Tony Dadika as the angry customer, Dwayne Thomas as the smarmy boss, Shlomoh Sherman as the computer boss, Chris Notarile as Ted Kord, Brandon Goins as Michael Carter, Niki Notarile as Selina Kyle, and Andrew J. Davis as Solomon Grundy.
The plot is closely related to a storyline in the first four issues of DC Comics' "JSA Classified" (written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Amanda Conner) in 2006. That storyline focused on Power Girl, a superstrong blonde bombshell. At one point in the story, her powers ran wild and she ended up wrecking a nice big chunk of New York City. The movie takes this event as its jumping-off point -- the Justice Society, the Justice League, and her cousin Superman all insist that Power Girl -- Karen, to her friends and teammates -- take a break from superheroing and get a normal job. But Karen isn't used to living a normal life -- she doesn't have much of a wardrobe outside of her super-costume, and she's never held a job that didn't involve punching supervillains into the next state. Can she successfully hold down any job without either humiliating herself or injuring innocent bystanders?
Yes, this is obviously a comic book fan movie, and it has certain weaknesses you'd expect from that sub-genre. A lot of the acting is less than great, the special effects are entirely nonexistent, and the plot is not very impressive (the film clocks in at about 15 minutes long, but could've been cut to 10 minutes or less with a bit more judicious editing to take out the boring bits). The superhero cameos are cute but blink-and-you'll-miss-them short -- and if you don't know much about comics, you'll probably miss them anyway. The audio and film quality are pretty poor, too -- the explanatory text that opens the movie is blurry and almost unreadable, and you have to guess at some of the muddy dialogue.
So what works? It's fairly funny -- not fall-on-the-floor-and-ruin-your-underwear funny, but good, clever, funny stuff. We know how Karen's jobs are all going to end, but it's good fun watching her try to maintain her cool when dealing with obnoxious and dangerously clueless customers. Also, the music -- most of it from the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Yoko Kanno's "Cowboy Bebop" soundtracks -- is excellent.
But what makes "The Classifieds" a real success is the performance of Tawnya Manion. Appearance is a big factor in that. In the comics, Power Girl is a gorgeous, buxom blonde -- Manion is also a gorgeous, buxom blonde. Of course, there are lots of actresses who could match Power Girl's appearance -- there are entire industries that are built solely on making women look beautiful, blonde, and busty. But Manion comes very close to perfectly embodying the personality of the Johns/Conner version of the character -- smart, frustrated, world-weary, extremely cynical, and only truly happy when she's punching a supervillain clear into the next state. Her costume is, of course, almost exactly like the one in the comic. Even her hair has a tendency to fall in her face, just like the character drawn by Conner. In other words, Manion looks like she stepped right off the comic book page into the real world.
If you would like to see the movie, you can find it here, here, or here.
(Our own etouffee just described this movie as "Anime + Woody Allen + Kafka." I never would've thought of it that way, but it makes pretty good sense. No balding bespectacled Jewish guys, no cockroaches, no big-eyed magic-girls, but a lot of the themes are there...)
Some research from Notarile's Blinky Productions website. |
