Critic Reviews

Ultimately, Supergirl is a story of dealing with loss and managing grief. It’s a movie that reminds us to celebrate what we have instead of wasting energy mourning what we’ve lost. Loss is emotional kryptonite we all share, and it’s clear that Supergirl, despite all her incredible power, also feels it.

Despite these flaws, Supergirl is a fantastic film and one that solidifies the newly rebooted DCU's strength as a franchise. It also signals that Gunn can be a bit more hands-off with a project without any drop in quality. Supergirl is as effervescent and colorful as Superman, but offers a cosmic twist that sheds away the extra baggage that comes with centering a story on Earth and takes the opportunity to truly develop this new version of the character.

Supergirl isn’t a regrettably bad outing or a sharp downward turn for the DCU experiment. It just lacks the ambitious, oversized verve of Gunn’s Superman, much less his other superhero work.

Alcock, tasked with playing a character that might strike some as “unlikable,” instead finds both the very human dimension and the out-of-this-world charisma necessary to make Kara worth rooting for.

The movie’s visual sensibility signals Supergirl’s broader success in threading the needle between a kid-friendly, hope-suffused superhero story and bleaker, grittier stuff—and in doing so, recognizing how those aspects of life are often interwoven, rather than diametrically opposed approaches to IP. That’s always been the push-pull of the Supergirl character, equally able to be portrayed as Superman’s gee-whiz kid-sister equivalent and his more jaded, literally alienated reflection. The joy of Supergirl is how it mixes the two without demoting its main gal to a sideshow.

Directed by Craig Gillespie (“I, Tonya”) and based on the fantastic “Woman of Tomorrow” comic book, “Supergirl” has plenty of action sequences, including one great bit when Kara battles teleporting tech pirates on a space bus. On the whole, however, it’s a much more emotional journey than a superhero movie fan might expect.

Just like its protagonist, Supergirl is rough around the edges, but holds plenty of promise for the future.

Ultimately "Supergirl” is a competent continuation of the DCU, even if it isn’t as well made as “Superman” before it.

Supergirl is an aspirational film because it does not demand perfection of its characters or their journeys, thereby modeling for those watching at home that we too can say the wrong thing or make the wrong decision and still find a path toward heroism.

When Supergirl takes big risks, they tend to pay off. There aren't enough of those moments, though.