Supergirl review: DC is already back to making mediocre superhero movies

Running time: 108 minutes.Rated PG-13 (sequences of strong violence, action, language, and smoking).

In theaters.It was only a year ago when everybody was euphorically proclaiming, “DC is saved! This is the dawn of a new era!”.Well, hold your Kryptos. With the forgettable “Supergirl,” the second chapter in the revamped DC Universe, the franchise quickly plummets back down to Earth.As the old saying goes: the more capes change, the more capes stay the same.Director Craig Gillespie’s movie starring an appealing Milly Alcock isn’t a total wreck.

It’s blessed with a strong lead and is adequately enough executed.Had we not been bombarded with a million superhero movies over the last 15 years, “Supergirl” would be passably fine. Yet we have been bombarded with a million superhero movies over the last 15 years.

And box office receipts have shown that the audience has reached a point where we selfishly would like these films to at least attempt to be special and unique.In story, style, stunts.

Something! What a bummer then that “Supergirl” is rather unlike its title character, a k a Kara Zor-El, an against-the-grain rebel with a cause.No, this is a movie that tries super hard to fit in and thus fade out.

And often that means, like a goth in the cafeteria, pretending to be edgy.Kara starts out as a super party girl — a drunken mess just like Aquaman or Thor in “Avengers: Endgame” — who takes shots all night and then wakes up drooling on the floor with a knife in her thigh. Supergirl’s slumming it on other planets far away from Metropolis as she goes hard for her twenty-third birthday.Really, though, she’s avoiding responsibilities and hiding from her painful past.

She was sent to Earth from planet Krypton by her parents after deadly Kryptonite ravaged its population. Her concerned cousin Superman begs her to come home.“I’m worried you might never find your people,” he cloyingly says. Instead she finds Ruthye (Eve Ridley), ...