Review by Rocky Balboa

Bottom line: A heartfelt Superman movie that plays to a broad audience thanks to an emotionally troubled Man of Steel.

The Superman who returns in "Superman Returns" is a different Man of Steel than we are used to seeing. In "Superman: The Movie," the film by director Richard Donner in 1978, the late Christopher Reeve rescued the iconic superhero from high camp with the sincerity and warmth of his acting. His Superman was a romantic charmer. Director Bryan Singer positions this new film as a sequel to Donner's film, and his Superman -- played with winning fortitude by newcomer Brandon Routh -- is less a Man of Steel than a Man of Heart.

While Routh is the same age as Reeve when he played the role, Routh's Superman is older in spirit. His Superman has known heartbreak and loss. He thinks about his late father and must consider the possibility that he might have a son. He even faces his own mortality. In other words, Singer wants to put human emotions into his alien superhero, and for the most part, he succeeds.

Not that the other kind of Superman movie turns up missing. The hero's rescues are spectacular thanks to the marvels of digital effects. And its villain, Lex Luthor, and Luthor's female companion, Kitty Kowalski -- deliciously played by Kevin Spacey and Parker Posey -- spice the film with extravagant comedy. So old fans can rejoice even as this "Superman" wins new fans from among those who normally don't care about superheroes.

Singer and writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris imagine that the superhero has vanished for five years. During that time, he has searched the far reaches of space for his home planet of Krypton and has determined that, yes, it is a destroyed planet. Now, returning to Earth, he discovers that absence has not made the heart grow fonder.

His mom (Eva Marie Saint) is overjoyed to see him, of course. But Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has won a Pulitzer by penning a story, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman," and the world has more or less forgotten its savior.

Superman in his Clark Kent guise gets his old job back at the Daily Planet from editor Perry White (Frank Langella). Day 1 on the job, Lois is in deadly peril when a space shuttle launched from the back of a jet fails to disengage and rockets into space with the jet still attached and Lois onboard. Fighting through fire and molten debris, Superman brings the disintegrating plane in for a soft landing in a crowded baseball stadium before he and Lois can lock eyes for the first time in five years. Well, he certainly knows how to get the girl's attention.

But Superman can't overcome the obstacles he faces in the new realities in Lois' life: Not only is she still angry at him for disappearing without a word, but she has a son, Jason (Tristan Leabu), and a fiance, Richard White (James Marsden), the editor's nephew.

Meanwhile, Lex, newly sprung from prison, plots to use Superman's own "crystal technology," married to Superman's Achilles' heel, kryptonite, in an ingenious scheme to ignite a new land mass in the Atlantic that will swamp North America while creating a gigantic real estate venture for him. These evil machinations barely leave Superman and Lois much time to reflect on their relationship. But clearly, Superman must wonder who Jason's father is even as he adjusts to a role reversal that sees Lois and her fiance coming to his rescue! Times have indeed changed.

To underscore the link to Donner's film, designer Guy Hendrix Dyas borrows here and there from John Barry's original design elements, composer John Williams' "Superman" theme is woven through the film, and Singer incorporates footage of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, Superman's long-dead father, into the early segments. However, this Superman does represent a new generation of flying. Superman doesn't so much fly as float. He can levitate a few feet or thousands of feet in the air. He's a Michael Jordan who never comes down. His nighttime excursion with Lois in the skies above Metropolis is reminiscent of the romantic moonlit ride Reeve gave Margot Kidder, his Lois, a ride that thrilled female viewers a generation ago.

This high-wire act would have gone for naught if Routh had not so capably filled the Man of Steel's costume. Like Reeve, he is just right physically, looking at times like the old comic book drawings of Superman. There is honesty in his acting where the emotions that play across Superman/Clark Kent's face and body come from deep within. Bosworth's Lois is a torn woman, highly ambivalent over the return of a man she has tried to hard to forget. And young Leabu does a nice job in conveying the innocence and curiosity of a boy with a new hero/authority figure in his life.

The oh-wow technical wizardry behind "Superman Returns" accomplishes two things: It makes you appreciate the huge advances in visual effects since 1978 but also appreciate the considerable accomplishments of Donner's team back in the day.