Rob Dean examines the overlooked, unappreciated or unfairly maligned movies. Sometimes these films haven't been seen by anyone, and sometimes they've been seen by everyone - who loathed them. This is Missing Reels.

Sometimes it's easiest to tell the most personal stories - the ones that really lay bare your feelings - by disguising it behind something truly bizarre. If something is seen as weird or ridiculous, then it's easy to dismiss and thus easy for the storyteller to not be hurt by the criticisms. By dressing an intimate truth in the costume of the outrageous, it offers some shelter to the fragile psyche of the creator. After all, critics will go after the garish or surreal before addressing anything deeper or more profound in a work. It's easier, for critics, to deal with the superficial and the shallow, to tackle the obvious and overt, than it is to peer deeper into a work. To be fair to critics, deeper readings of films usually reveal a lack of depth and not a hidden profundity. Sometimes a tentacle is just a tentacle, or a headshot is just a headshot.

And so the time honored tradition of Trojan Horsing other layers in populist work. Take whatever is popular in mainstream entertainment and hit all the same notes, adhere to the formulas, while subtly slipping in breadcrumbs of your ulterior motive. Sometimes this technique is used for political purposes, other times it's a deconstruction of the entire genre. But, occasionally, it's a way for the artist to reveal something that would leave him ultimately vulnerable, except that it's done in a way that's easy to disavow. "I'm just telling a story of a guy fighting a three-headed alien - I don't see where you get all this 'father issue' stuff!"

Today's film, Super, told a very universal story with immensely personal elements all wrapped up in a genre fare that could be dismissed by naysayers as ultraviolent or "just another superhero flick." Super is a fun flick that has some great scenes of action, lots of WTF moments and great comedy. But, as I was watching it, I couldn't help but sense that something else was going on - there was another layer to this whole story that seemed to be occurring just beneath the surface. The movie ended and I took to the interwebs and found Devin Faraci's excellent review. It was well written and the only one that I could see that openly dealt with what I thought this movie was about: dealing with a devastating break-up.

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