Wildly Uneven 'Superfly' Strives To Take The Anti- Out Of Its Antihero

Inflation was brutal in the '70s, so it's no surprise that everything in SuperFly — a glossy update of Gordon Parks, Jr.'s gritty 1972 blaxploitation landmark Super [spacebar] Fly — is exponentially bigger. The original was a cinéma vérité quickie; nothing else in it was as memorable as Curtis Mayfield's funky soundtrack, or the still-photo montage documenting mid-level drug dealer's Youngblood Priest's operation over Mayfield's song "Pusherman." For all its antihero's coke-spoon-on-a-gold-chain swagger, Super Fly was a humble affair. Its big finale is a fistfight that lasts maybe one-third as long as its bathub sex scene.

Back then, the notion of a movie about a criminal —followed into theaters by just a few months.) In the gangster pictures and films noir that predated blaxploitation, outlaws were usually punished for their transgressions, whether it was karma or just the Production Code.