3 out of 5

Director: Frank Packard

Abar: Black Superman is interestingly boring. While the style and acting are very true to the blaxploitation scene, some elements are surprisingly wayward, but the plot payoff comes way too late in the film to make it anything more than a passing interest. The movie starts with a well-off black family moving into a primarily white neighborhood, immediately facing persecution from their neighbors. These initial scenes are involving, as the interactions are paced well and carry a certain sense of maturity – the head of the family, a doctor (J. Walter Smith) is not suprised by the racism but does not back down from it either. And his involvement with his peers is also atypically shown – that his afluential position is accepted as important, and so assistance is provided for his protection, but eventually it is suggested that the good doctor move, otherwise he will have to continually face the harrassment at home. This is established in the first 20 or so minutes. Then Abar arrives, a sort of local superhero for African Americans, wanting to protect the doctor but not understanding why the doctor wants to live in a white neighbhorhood. The back and forths between the doctor and Abar are repetitive and dialogue heavy, hoping to be important but just weighing the movie down. It does not rev up until the last fifteen or so minutes of the film, when the doctor reveals his plans to use crazy medicine magic to turn Abar into a TRUE superhero. That’s a lot, right? Exactly. The film tries to do too much before going where it’s promised to go. Respectable for the attempt, but ho-hum execution. Still, if you can sit through it, it is an overall entertaining entry into the genre.