Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story movie review (2024) | Roger Ebert

On May 27, 1995, Christopher Reeve, who became internationally famous playing the title character in the original Superman movies, was riding at the  Commonwealth Park equestrian center in Culpeper, Virginia when his horse refused to jump a one meter tall, W-shaped fence. Reeve fell and shattered his top two vertebrae. He barely survived, was rendered quadriplegic and nearly immobile, and would endure severe breathing challenges for the rest of his life. Headlines around the world treated this as a great irony: Superman not only couldn’t fly anymore, he could barely move. It was an understandable way to frame it, but and well-meaning, but ultimately dehumanizing.

The new documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” pushes back against that presentation of Reeve’s accident and does their best not to treat Reeve’s story as that of a man who had it all but suddenly lost it. Instead, Reeve’s life is presented as a story of nearly superhuman endurance and determination: a beautiful and athletic movie star was struck down in his prime, then reconfigured himself as activist on behalf of people with disabilities, as well as a champion of funding for science that might alleviate or eliminate the suffering of others with spinal cord injuries. 

Co-directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, “Super/Man” doesn’t flinch from the blunt physical facts of what happened. But in the end the approach cements the movie as a work of integrity. It consistently refuses to walk the much easier path taken by previous accounts of Reeve’s life, which front-loaded the story with his rise to stardom and attempts to move beyond his defining role as Superman, then presented his life after the accident as an inspiring postscript that couldn’t be lingered over because it would make audiences sad.

The filmmakers here aren’t sugarcoating anything here. They’re laying out what happened: not just the basic facts of Reeve’s life before and after, but the emotional impact on his friends (including his Juilliard acting program roommate Robin Williams, who was like a brother to him); his wife Dana, a super-heroic spouse who took care of him, and inspired and joined his activism; his first two children, Matthew and Alexandra; the kids’ mother Gae Exton (Reeve’s on-again, off-again girlfriend for a decade); and most piercingly, little Will Reeve, his son with Dana. Will was a toddler when the accident happened, and spent his third birthday without his father because Reeve was in the hospital fighting for his life. There are a lot of moving home video snippets in the documentary, but the bits showing that beautiful little boy, who was then too young to understand the magnitude of his father’s suffering, are right up at the top.

There’s a fair amount of information about Reeve’s career as an actor, especially his struggle to reconcile his beloved performance as Superman against his desire to prove himself in other types of roles (which he did in “Street Smart,” “Deathtrap” and “Somewhere in Time,” even though audiences didn’t turn out like they did when he wore the cape and tights). But this aspect of his life is interspersed with the account of his accident, survival, and subsequent attempts to manage his pain, relearn everything about how to live, and become a spokesperson for others dealing with the same challenges.

The movie feels a bit rushed or compacted at times—sometimes you might want it to live inside of a moment for longer than it does—and the music, which seems to be aiming for effects comparable to John Williams’ “Superman” score, is too ever-present, intrusive and loud at times; it often seems to be trying to tell us how to feel, which just isn’t necessary with a story so inherently harrowing and inspiring.

But all in all, this is a thoughtful and at times remarkable piece of nonfiction, working in an accessible commercial vein but doing its best not to take the easy way into any aspect of Reeve’s story. It’s most impressive when it’s pointing a camera at Reeve’s colleagues (including Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels and Whoopi Goldberg) as they talk about Reeve’s attempts to reinvent himself as a visibly paralyzed actor (he did a made-for-TV remake of “Rear Window”) and as a director, and even more so, when it’s letting his children tell the story of their father’s perseverance and the dedication of Dana Reeve, who is presented as so single-mindedly devoted to his physical and emotional care that you can understand why she wasn’t around for very long after her husband’s passing in 2004. Documentaries that really know how to listen are increasingly rare, and this is a good one.

The movie deserves a wide audience, and hopefully will redouble efforts to search for medical solutions that can ease the suffering of people with spinal cord injuries or perhaps one day make them a thing of the past.