The Meteor Man is one movie of which I have an eidetic recall and about which no one I ever meet seems to have heard a thing.  I guess in other words it represents best what I did with the entire decade of the 90s:  sitting around absorbing completely obscure things.

To be honest, though, I don’t know how something so amazing slipped under the radar.  It’s a shame that a movie like this, flawed as it might be, escaped attention, though I have a few heavy theories.  I’ll get to that in a second, though.

If you’re not already familiar with this movie, a simple description of it would sound rather like Grandpa bloviating hyperbole trying to describe The Princess Bride to a sick Fred Savage.  We are shown the epic story of the creation, fall, betrayal, and final fate of a superhero.  If anything, Meteor Man suffers slightly if only because of the taut economy of storytelling Robert Townsend employs so that he gets to touch on all the themes his story dredges up, everything from metaphysics; to jazz; to fabulous early-90s styled fades dyed conspicuously gold; to gang violence; to wigs; to supernatural agriculture; to neighborhood revitalization; to runway modeling.

At the beginning, we are introduced to Jefferson Reed (Robert Townsend), a very mild-mannered substitute school teacher who is so beleaguered by his own timidity to find himself failing at work, failing as a musician, and disappointing his doting parents.  In fact, Townsend, as writer and director as well as leading role, plays up Reed’s unexplained (his parents being vibrant, assertive, and confrontational) lack of backbone beyond nuance into caricature, but it serves to underline the later transformation his character undergoes.  Reed goes about his life in an inner-city Washington, D.C., neighborhood absolutely crawling with drugs and gang violence, and for all we know, if not for the titular meteor’s intervention, Reed would probably fall victim to a violent crime before he even could continue to eke out a meager existence as a second-rate teacher for the rest of his career.

Of course, this doesn’t prove to be the case.  Barely fifteen minutes into Meteor Man—just enough time to exposit the above—the meteor makes its first brief and shining appearance (though not its last).  It roars into the scene through the help of some of the worst special effects to hit the big screen in the 90s and strikes Reed, who has been chased by the entirety of the perfectly coiffed and attired Golden Lords street gang down a blind alley.  (Maybe I’m reading in the allegory here, but if it’s deliberate, it seems laid on thick:  He’s run ragged and weary into a dead-end alley by his own cowardice, essentially.)

He quickly recovers from traumatic third-degree burns, and we quickly, comically learn about Reed’s new hodgepodge of powers.  Townsend seems to have chosen several standard-issue superpowers for Reed which we discover in time (flight, strength, invulnerability, X-ray vision), as well as a few non-standard ones (temporarily absorbing by touch the contents of any book).  Luckily, his friend Michael (Eddie Griffin) is around and just briefly mentioned as being scientifically inclined earlier, so he usually pops in with a succinct explanation of certain plot points that can’t be elaborated or deliberated on for any length of time.

The movie’s pace is frantic, and we barely have time to be told, let alone shown, many things.  Townsend works in several devices (multiple montages, voiceovers, shifting points of view) to tell as much of the story as possible in the short 99-minute running time.  The pace is almost jarring, taking no time for subtlety and instead often socking the viewer in the face with comedy and tragedy rapid-fire.  It works within the context of the movie’s comic-book style storytelling, but it leaves occasional holes and rough burrs in the plot that could have used a little further filling in or smoothing out.

Roy Fegan overshadows Don Cheadle for a brief and shining moment

Reed, now as Meteor Man, the new recipient of super powers, a new costume and identity, and the enthusiastic support of his parents and neighbors, (predictably) unwittingly finds himself pitted against Simon Caine (Roy Fegan) and his Golden Lords, the most fabulous gang ever to terrorize D.C.  Hilarity and tragedy ensue as the plot rushes from there towards its lengthy and amazing conclusion involving an all-out neighborhood brawl.

I’m going to have to break out two sets of points for this movie, one set to discuss as many amazing things as I can remember before I publish this, and another set to discuss the shortcomings that undermined Meteor Man‘s success in gaining more mainstream attention.

So many good points (I should emphasize how fun this movie is to watch), but if I’m forced to choose a few:

• 

  The Golden Lords welcome all ages

  The Golden Lords street gang is the most fabulous gang ever to menace a principal character on screen since the Jets and the Sharks.  They dress exactly alike, in black and gold, with amazing matching gold hair.  Even their nicknames range from threatening (“Uzi”) to whimsical (Don Cheadle in particular as “Goldilocks”).  Roy Fegan brings just the right touch of charm and evil to the role of Simon Caine, the leader of the Golden Lords, whose only rule is the Golden Rule:  What Simon says, goes.  We see the gang early on organized into named tiers by age:  The Golden Lords, underneath which are the Junior Lords (teenagers), and then the Baby Lords (young children barely old enough to be in school).  Townsend shows the tiers in deliberately staggered presentation early on, literally stepping out of darkness one at a time, from initiates to the senior members (who step forth handling a tiger, as Simon wields a Slinky toy).  Townsend definitely opted for extreme caricature in depicting the Golden Lords, in my opinion, due to his thrift of time.  Without needing in-depth exposition, he easily shows a mini-version of the recruitment and indoctrination of youth sometimes used by actual gangs.  The caricature quality also adds an enormous comedic value, both intentionally and unintentionally.  It’s worth it to watch this movie if only to hear Simon intone ominously, “Slinkies move like life:  In one second, everything can change.”
• As an actor, Robert Townsend really excels at expressing emotions, but above all, pain. He excels at selling taking a punch (which he does, several times) like nobody else I’ve ever seen in real life or on the screen. It’s viscerally uncomfortable to watch him take beatings.
• 

  "Good morning, Mr. Moses!"

  James Earl Jones sports an impressive array of wigs.  Actually, his character in Meteor Man is one of the more skillfully crafted ones.  He begins as a vain, buoyant bachelor who later manages to express deep shame at his complicity in betraying Reed.  Watching him redeem his pride and honor by sacrificing his most prized possession in order to rally the neighborhood to fight back against the Golden Lords forms a lump in my throat, despite myself, in the midst of this silly, silly movie.
• In fact, I should just call attention to the amazing ensemble cast, including at least a cameo by several musicians and groups, such as Big Daddy Kane, Luther Vandross, and Another Bad Creation.  Greatest hits of the era, right?  In fact, Cypress Hill and Naughty by Nature appear as crips and bloods, respectively.  Even Sinbad appears briefly; remember Sinbad?
• Reed wields his powers like a true nerd, pilfering book contents, talking with his dog around the apartment, using his laser vision to fry an egg, and refusing to fly at first more than six feet off the ground, due to his fear of heights.
• Interestingly, white actors appear in only two or so roles, one as a doctor who appears on screen for about a minute, and the other as Simon Caine’s boss, the short-tempered, very rich and powerful leader of an international gang syndicate.  It goes to show, white people really are the ultimate evil.  Beyond that, they don’t appear or speak at all.  Meteor Man treads over some issues of race, like crime, poverty, and so on, but in a rather peripheral way, simply as a setting for Townsend’s main superhero story.  He isn’t seeking to make this a story about class or race with this choice of setting; what he’s doing is making it personal.  Townsend used Meteor Man to show the audience a story about what he knew and experienced in his life, and in my opinion, that comes through easily and makes the movie all that much more enjoyable to watch.

Unfortunately, this movie also has a few flaws.

• It’s rather low-budget, and it shows.  I can only imagine what could have been done with more time, more money, especially with special effects.  This isn’t to say my suspension of disbelief was threatened too much (inasmuch as one can be maintained for a comedy superhero movie).
• A lot of details appear to have been cut in the editing room, leaving little rough spots and plot holes that begin to appear especially closer to the end of the movie.  It’s unclear how quickly time is passing, for example.  It’s also unclear how the Golden Lords discover his powers are fading, or when exactly this process begins and ends.  His powers also appear to be inconsistent.  It’s hard to be sure which ones he has when as the plot moves forward, though the movie does a good job of using each power he has at least once before it plays a role in the plot.  It’s also unclear when or how he loses his fear of flying.
• Eddie Griffin’s character Michael is hard to tolerate.  He vacillates between scientist and sleaze ball but is only believable in the latter role.  As a comic relief, his only comedic value rests in being a relentless horn dog, but it’s just not funny.  Not only that, but Michael also lies and steals and appears to have no redeeming qualities at all.  He seems to be in Reed’s life only because Reed’s such a pushover and forgives all his problems.
• Women have few roles and are flat, peripheral characters, often only serving as sex objects.  This movie fails the Bechdel test pretty thoroughly, needless to say.  Only Reed’s mom is the only interesting female character, though she only exists to be, well, a mom.

The flaws really all seem to stem from the same fundamental problem:  This movie didn’t have a chance go grow and develop properly.  Its running time was too short, and its budget was too low.  I don’t blame any of its shortcomings for Townsend’s lack of talent or creativity, nor really his lack of care about this project, though I’m just guessing about that.  It comes through that he’s really enjoying his role and this story.

Rather, it just seems like it never got a fair chance in the first place to be as amazing as I can imagine it could have been.  Maybe by 1993, a lot of the subcultural niche represented in the movie (especially the music scene at that point) was already on the wane.  Maybe the comic book superhero genre was at a lull between the 80s and the 2000s.  Maybe it was a victim of the same racist disregard a lot of black-produced media in America falls victim to, that a lot of its merits got overlooked even before it was made, and certainly before it was marketed.  It might also be that Robert Townsend wasn’t established well enough as a comedian to garner a larger budget, and so he did the best with what he could.  (If I had to guess, I’d say he spent half of it on his costume, a quarter of it on James Earl Jones, and used the rest for this movie.)  Too bad his movie career seemed to stall rather than soar from this point.

Whatever the reason for Meteor Man‘s relative obscurity, if I had $50 million tomorrow, I’d definitely be knocking on Robert Townsend’s door asking for another shot at making this work like it never quite did originally.