Critic Reviews

While Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui's documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story recounts Reeve's journey with appropriate tenderness, it isn't a hagiography. It consistently reminds audiences that this was a real human being, and not actually a savior from another star.

One of the aspects that makes Super/Man so satisfying is that for a biographical film in which tragedy and loss play such a central part, it’s rich in evidence of hope and kindness, gratitude and the resilience of the human spirit.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a moving, wrenching, compellingly well-made documentary about Reeve’s life that inevitably ends up centering on his accident and its aftermath.

“Super/Man” is emotional, resilient, and inspiring, opening up private battles to the general public.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story paints a rich portrait of Reeve as an individual, celebrity, activist, and family man, bolstered by commentary from his children and friends and, additionally, from Reeve himself.

As much as it’s a movie about one man’s struggle, it’s a family drama too, and the way his paralysis shifts their dynamic over the years is enrapturing to watch.

The editing in Super/Man is perfectly handled, taking what could’ve been a straightforward documentary and turning a life into a collection of what makes us who we are—both the good and the bad.

Instead of treating the star’s life chronologically, they move between a consideration of his career and his spinal injury advocacy work in the wake of the devastating 1995 horse-riding accident that left him paralysed from the neck down. The result has the engaging feel of a dialogue between the pre- and post-accident Reeve and his family as his views and his life shifted as a consequence.

It is a rich and intensely moving experience.

Astutely judged for the most part, and reflective on what Reeve meant to people in all phases of his life, the British documentary Super/Man is an emotional rollercoaster with some undeniably walloping moments. The relationships that quite literally saved Reeve come to the fore.