It's G-Girl, with super man trouble

Among the superheroes of summer, G-Girl, the wonder woman played by Uma Thurman in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, looks as good in skintight black neoprene as Halle Berry's Storm in X-Men. More pertinent, G-Girl has a faster response time than either Storm or Superman. And not only when she's delivering people from evil.

Like the season's other superheroes, G-Girl wants to balance her omnipotence with emotional needs. One day, when she's in her street disguise, a thief steals her handbag. When an ordinary guy, Matt (Luke Wilson), gets it back for her, the gal who rescues Manhattanites falls for her rescuer. Hard.

How hard? When they canoodle, not only does the Earth move, but so does the bed.

And when Matt, exhausted by G-Girl's energy and neediness, breaks up with her, she busts his heart and other organs.

This sophomoric mix of the supernatural and screwball from Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) is diverting, cheesy fun, with Thurman's G-Girl as a droll combination of Superwoman and Über Shrew.

Wilson plays his scenes with Thurman as if too intimidated to move - or act. He fares much better with the second female lead, Anna Faris, as a colleague from work on whom he has a crush, and with Rainn Wilson (no relation), hilarious as his horndog pal.

What does it say about the film's mixed messages that I saw it as a comedy about male inadequacy in the face of superwoman while my estimable colleague Gary Thompson saw it as a comedy about women being too emotional to handle power? I saw female potency; he saw PMS.

Both of us probably can agree that the film, written by Simpsons scribe Don Payne, is symptomatic of superhero relationship trouble. This is the summer of super discontent: G-Girl and Superman and Wolverine want human relationships but lack the human touch to negotiate them. The joke is that if they can't, who can?

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend ** 1/2 (out of four stars)

Produced by Bill Carraro, Arnon Milchan and Gavin Polone, directed by Ivan Reitman, written by Don Payne, photography by Don Burgess, music by Teddy Castellucci, distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 mins.

G-Girl/Jenny Johnson. . . Uma Thurman

Matt Saunders. . . Luke Wilson

Hannah Lewis. . . Anna Faris

Prof. Bedlam. . . Eddie Izzard

Vaughan Haige. . . Rainn Wilson

Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual content, crude humor, brief nudity)

Playing at: area theaters