Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I remember being very excited seeing the trailers for this. I wasn't able to see it it in theatres then, but I still wanted to watch it one day.I didn't know too much about who was in the movie or what the plot was either, except that Helen Slater was Supergirl.Faye Dunaway makes a dastardly villain.Really enjoyed the movie.

There is plenty of terrible film that found cult followings. "The Room" and "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" are just 2. This film however is so bland and stupid that this 1984 film comes across like a British made 1960's film. However this film stumbles so bad that it's almost embarrassing to admit that I enjoy watching it. In this film "Supergirl" has to come to earth. In error the "Omegahedron" gets sent to earth. This powers "Supergirls" city. It gets released in error and lands on Earth and recovered by a Modern Day witch named Selena. The witch is played by Faye Dunaway. 3 years after "Mommie Dearest" Faye Dunaway was happy to land this huge role. However she is so over the top that she should remove this film from her resume and not "Mommie Dearest". Brenda Vaccaro plays her sidekick.Helen Slater plays "Supergirl" and she is fine but the film itself lets her down. She is pretty and plays both "Supergirl" and her alter ego Linda Lee with ease. Watch this for what this is and not what you expect. This is not "Superman". However Richard Donner created a film that was a hard act to follow. Richard Donner and Tom Mankiewicz been involved with this film we would had a much better film.The special effect in this are not very good. The plot is stupid and the pacing is terrible not matter what version you watch! There is several. There is the USA THEATRICAL VERSION. THE INTERNATIONAL VERSION. THE DIRECTOR CUT. There is also several television edition. All versions has footage that is not seen on other editions. Maybe one day Warner Brothers will released a home video version that has all the deleted scenes included as a bonus feature.

This movie is an okay film, but offers no where near the wonder, amusement or story as Superman (the first film). However, the real problem with this film is, unfortunately, Helen Slater.As good as Helen Slater looks in the Supergirl costume, her acting was just as oppositely bad. Most of the time, Slater's acting was flat and wooden. She has a weird speech pattern that, most of the time just didn't work for the role. While I realize, Kara is from Argo City, it was never established that people there had weird speech patterns, unless you count the over-the-top scene-chewing dialog that spewed from Peter O'Toole's mouth. I can forgive Peter O'Toole's Shakespearean dialog delivery for several reasons: 1) he's a supplemental character who, thankfully, has limited screen time, 2) what he says and does is mostly inconsequential to the main plot of the film and 3) it establishes that O'Toole's character, who was a former well known and respected scientist has now become an eccentric crackpot who is no longer respected for any of his ideas.However, Slater is the lead in this film. As a lead in a superhero film, the actor must strike up a rapport with the audience immediately as both likable and believable. Slater fails to properly secure both of those qualities with the audience and, instead, goes on to deliver a mostly utilitarian screen romp. Unfortunately, while Slater tries hard to make Kara seem innocent and sympathetic and likable, her 19 year old acting abilities are severely taxed and get in the way of this role. In other words, while she looks the part, she couldn't act it. She was ultimately miscast.As for Faye Dunaway, Brenda Vacarro and the rest of the cast, they do their level best to bring some semblance of life to their characters and roles. Sure, Dunaway is way over-the-top like O'Toole, but in her own different way. For the witch Selena, her over the top delivery, while a bit campy, works for what it is. In fact, if the lead role had been cast properly, I believe Dunaway's offbeat acting would have worked perfectly fine to balance the mostly straight forward lead role.Instead, what we get is an odd array of actors with very little chemistry or balance together. Though, Brenda Vacarro and Faye Dunaway together as a team was probably the best casting in the film. These two truly seemed to be BFFs and pulled it off in spite of the dialog.The story itself is simplistic and silly. Two super people fighting over a 'muscle pool guy' is about as inane a plot device as you can think up for a superhero film. Argo City is in peril and Supergirl has a school girl crush on some random muscle guy that she feels she has to constantly save? Yeah, no.Saving the Omegahedron, the power source of Argo City, is her most important task. Yet she has time to gawk at and save this muscle guy too many times from Selena, let alone run around at some girl school playing student in a tiny town. I know why they included the school. It was intended as a way to introduce Lucy Lane... an inconsequential character that didn't need to be in the film. Yes, it did let us know that Lois has a younger sister, but still an entirely unnecessary addition to the film.Having Supergirl thrown into the phantom zone and then emerging only to fight Selena's 'demon' left the film about as much fun as yanking off an adhesive bandage. Overall, I was hoping for a more sensible Superhero film with Supergirl taking on more important tasks than facing a silly little witch. In fact, Supergirl should have been able to find and retrieve the Omegahedron in the first 15 minutes of the film which would have left 1.25 hours to actually let Supergirl explore more of the earth, pick and choose more important problems to solve rather than be stuck in a tiny inconsequential town saving a lame muscle guy who's character is about as dumb as a brick. I can't even fathom why someone from an advanced society like Argo City who is smart enough to understand sixth dimensional math would be at all interested in a dumb earth muscle jock?

Of all the line of Super movies made by Salkinds, people seem pretty universal in their praise for the first movie as a classic, fans of Superman II seem to get the urge to up-heave at Superman III, while people who love Superman III tend to dis Superman II, while everyone seems to regard Supergirl and Superman IV as dying gasps of a franchise.My own experience? Well, I was living in the area of Fenton, MI at the time, and somehow I ended up seeing, if I recall right, Supergirl four or five times. Why? Well, Helen Slater proved to be perfect casting for the role of Supergirl. While not quite as landmark as Williams' immortal Superman theme, the score of Supergirl is as memorable in its own right (curiously enough, it was reused for a Power Rangers movie a few years later). And scattered through the movie are some magnificent scenes,such as Supergirl first emerging on Earth, and your gang- bangers from Hollywood central casting who discover they picked the WRONG girl for their victim.Nonetheless I have to acknowledge the movie's weaknesses. It was in retrospect that I realized the movie's script essentially copied in color-by-the-numbers fashion the script of Superman I, this time done in a duller and less interesting manner. Even the very first Superman movie had its flaws, but it was really the sequels hurt by these flaws as the cynical and camp elements grew and became magnified with every passing movie.I thought DC Comics/Time-Warner missed an opportunity with Superman IV. If only they had just made a movie titled V (acknowledging both Superman I-III and Supergirl as prequels) and actually tried to find out what actually happened to Superman on one of those old chestnut "out of the office while on a mission to another galaxy" jaunts. They just might have made a great movie, if say, Superman were to show up on Earth with a character in tow by the name of Brainiac, supposedly on a diplomatic mission of peace. Meanwhile, Supergirl had already returned to earth in search of Superman's help because Argo City has mysteriously vanished, only for her overtures to be sabotaged by a mysterious enemy who steals her superpowers and labels her as a mental case. Meanwhile, as Clark Kent is enjoying a reunion with Lana Lang,Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane have dragged Lois Lane into taking a second look at that this mystery girl Linda, with the unexpected help of Nigel and Gorman (genuinely reformed, but still far from paragons of virtue, who form a comic odd-couple in trying to work together). Together, they turn up evidence that Brainiac may not have come in peace as claimed but has been duping Superman all along, but it's already too late as now Earth's cities are suddenly mysteriously vanishing...Oh well, we got Superman IV instead (*SIGH*). And we had to wait some years before another Superman movie would tackle the theme of Superman coming back to earth after a considerable time of exile, not to mention some years before the Supergirl character would literally come back from the grave (meaning no more Helen Slater as Kara Zor-El--*DOUBLE SIGH*--though apparently she made a great Lara later on).