I recently rented a movie called Comic Book Villains in the hopes of having a couple of laughs; unfortunately I was sadly disappointed.

The movie is set in a small town in the USA in which there are two competing comic book stores. One store is owned by Raymond (Donal Logue), who is a hard-core comics fanatic. He's single, knows an inordinate amount of information about every comic book ever written, and smokes a pipe. His store is cosy, comfortable, and full of time-wasters who stand around having philosophical discussions about various comic book characters. On the other side of the town is the competition: the clean and functional shop run by Norman (Michael Rapaport) and Judy (Natasha Lyonne). The worst slander Raymond says of the couple is that they sell action figures, trading cards, and are mere dabblers in the art of selling comics. There is enough fertile ground here for a lot of laughs, especially if you are familiar with the comic book world, which has a lot of cross-over with geeks and nerds - yeah, soft targets for comedy.

Unfortunately, nearly all the characters in the film are either unredeemably irritating - such as all the comic store owners - or boring like Archie (DJ Qualls). The conflict comes from the death of a serious comics collector who has left the motherlode of comics behind in the care of his mother. Archie is the character the audience is supposed to identify with. He's nominally on Raymond's side, but he's more interested in hanging out and talking to Mrs. Cresswell (Eileen Brennan) about her life, rather than trying to persuade her to sell the collection. The rivalry between the two groups gets worked up to fever pitch, and Raymond turns to an ex-con he once knew in High School. Carter (Cary Elwes) is fixing up his house when he's not watching his stripper girlfriend Kiki (Monet Mazur). Hi-jinks then ensue.

As you can see by my descriptions, none of these characters have any depth or complexity to them; they are all stereotypes, as two-dimensional as the comic book villains they attempt to emulate. The movie strives to be a black comedy, but it doesn't have the necessary macabre humour. Elwes is the best actor of the lot, and genuinely injects some interest into his character, and there is chemistry between him and Mazur. But both of them are minor characters with the least amount of screen time. Ultimately you don't care about any of them, and when it devolves into violence, you just wish they'd get it over with quickly.

I was rather alarmed to notice that Comic Book Villains was written and directed by James Robinson. Why should that worry me? Well, the same James Robinson wrote the screenplay for the forthcoming League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. For those of you not in the know, LXG is based on the comic book series of the same name by the excellent writer Alan Moore. I've heard that Fox has shortened the name of the movie to The League, and the rumours about the movie are not promising. Though I'll be happy to be proven wrong about that when the movie comes out.