My Super Ex-girlfriend Review

July 20, 2006 5:31 PM
by [email]

If you’ve seen the frequently aired commercials for Ivan Reitman’s “My Super Ex-Girlfriend,” several things have probably struck you as out-of-the-ordinary. A shark crashing through an apartment wall is one; a car dropping in the middle of a city street is another. But nothing is as surprising as the plot twist the movie depends completely on: Luke Wilson dumping Uma Thurman.

I don’t know many people, male or female, who would turn down a date with the “Kill Bill” femme-fatale- especially when she can fly and save children from speeding cars. But in Reitman’s not-quite romantic comedy, Thurman’s Jenny Johnson, a.k.a G-Girl, is as jealous and neurotic as any female mortal…and ultimately as strong.

On a recent summer morning, the sleek and very friendly duo met with press to chat about their latest film.

Q: Is it hard to save the world in heels?

UMA: If you’re going to save the world, you should do it in style. It’s such a part of your character- you have to wear it, it can’t wear you.

LUKE: The first time she put (the costume) on, I was told to stand there with Uma and I could sense it wasn’t right. (Photographers) kept telling me, “Could you just step to the side? A little further? Further?” Next thing I knew I was about ten yards away.

Q: Some people are upset that it's G-Girl and not G-Woman.

UMA: Get a life. As a real full-fledged and aging woman I just love The G-Girl thing. She's completely uncensored. It's fun as a good New England girl- you sort of mind your p's and q's and d's and b's and x's and y's and z's. She's just in a primal scream halfway through the movie which is an absolute thrill.

Q: How is this different from other superhero movies?

UMA: Here's this girl like any of us who stumbles on a rock. She deals with her responsibility of having superpowers, but she really resents it. That's the humor in the piece.

LUKE: I think that it's definitely a straight forward comedy. I think that you would agree that there a couple of pretty humorous sex scenes.

UMA: (And) I generally don’t find sex scenes that interesting anymore.

LUKE: Have you ever seen “Wild Orchid”?

UMA: Yeah, and you know I don’t find that sexy, but this scene is funny. Can you think of a funnier sex scene in a movie? You gotta go overseas to get the humor back in sex.

Q: How did you prepare for those scenes?

UMA: We were very careful and I have great precision, too. They trained me, those Chinese guys. Luke was safe.

LUKE: The fun thing is that usually when you have a scene like that it'll get very quiet on the set and people are walking around in robes and it'll be a closed set, but this couldn't have been more relaxed. You had two big burly crew guys shaking the bed, cigarettes dangling out of their mouths…

UMA: Riding a sled. Boom!

LUKE: I'm like the new Ford Taurus. I'm an extremely easy ride.

UMA: We would have days of doing just really wonderful characters scenes not necessarily in the context of the superhero world. Other days I would be flying around New York City swinging him by the pants off of a crane on 54th Street.

Q: She’s a guy’s fantasy and a guy’s nightmare. Like in “Fatal Attraction.”

UMA: You caught my reference! I think that women are stronger than they're presented to be and I think that men are more sensitive and complicated than how they're presented to be. To me it's completely normal to look at a strong woman character. I find it odd that there are less represented in movies, the other way around.

Q: How do you deal with break-ups?

UMA: These things aren’t a big surprise. For the sake of drama we have the slightly whack-job character that gets taken by surprise. What I find touching in some of the women I’ve played is you try too hard and ruin everything. The far-fetched stuff is far-fetched, but the desperate neediness of someone just trying to make you like them…she appealed to me.

LUKE: I choose to always go back to Texas. Break-ups are never fun.

”My Super Ex-Girlfriend” opens on July 21st.