If you’re still reeling from last year’s Michael J Fox documentary Still , buckle up. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story takes another icon of 1970s and 1980s cinema struck down by tragedy, documenting the unknown actor’s catapult to stardom as the lead in 1978’s Superman , and the showjumping champion left unable to move from the shoulders down after being thrown from a horse in 1995. Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, who previously made a 2018 film about fashion designer Alexander McQueen, use recordings from Reeve’s audiobook memoir Still Me (1999) and interviews with family and friends, including Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close, Jeff Daniels and Whoopi Goldberg, to chart the death-defying story of Reeve’s rise to stardom and post-accident journey, battling for survival and fighting for funding for spinal injuries and other disabilities.
The film is clear-eyed about Reeve’s struggles with family life – his eldest son recalls that his mother was virtually a single parent, because his father was away so much – and touches on some controversial aspects of his activism on behalf of the disabled community, including a controversial charity ad in which CGI was used to make the quadriplegic actor get out of his chair and walk. 1. Reeve’s father was not proud of his son Reeve’s father, Franklin, was a hard taskmaster.
The only time he celebrated his son’s success was when the actor told his father he had been cast as Superman. Franklin ordered champagne –.