“How is my boy supposed to do his schoolwork at night? By candle light?” “Lincoln did.”

Justin’s rating: Rent ain’t everything, man

Justin’s review: A little edgy comedy that skated by in the early ’90s with little attention, The Super perhaps deserves some re-evaluation. Joe Pesci is Lou, a heartless but quippy superintendent who inherits a rundown apartment building from his father. He puts the squeeze on all the tenants for rent even though the building is barely functional as a living space.

Karma comes to bite his short butt when he’s ordered by a court to move in and actually live in this squalor with the building’s colorful inhabitants until he brings that whole place up to code. To complicate things, his slum lord father tells him that if Lou improves even a single apartment while he’s there, Lou is getting written out of the family will for being weak.

It’s a simple premise with a predictable trajectory, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Pesci is certainly in his element at being a funny slimeball who freaks out when he gets his comeuppance. And who knows? Maybe there’s even a true heart underneath all of that filth!

But you’re going to have to be OK with Pesci at his most loud, abrasive, and profanity-spewing to really get into The Super. Lou is rude to pretty much everyone, plays the leering letch at every opportunity, and only gradually comes around to developing some basic human compassion. This is somewhere closer to the annoying character he played in the Lethal Weapon series than the poet-bum of With Honors.

No doubt there’s a lot of wishful fantasy at play here for anyone who’s lived in a place run by a heartless landlord, but we don’t really get to know Lou that much before he’s put in his place. I like that he does get an education about what inner city life is actually like, although it’s pretty surface at best. He does make good friends with a little kid who helps to bring out his better self.

However, just because you have a rascal change his tune by the end of a movie doesn’t mean that it’s worth the journey. The Super is supposed to be a comedy, yet it hardly made me smile — nevermind laugh. It’s not even that mean or snarky; it’s just kind of dull. The only thing this movie excels in doing is portraying the most skeevy living quarters you’ll ever see outside of Joe’s Apartment. That’s not worth your time, trust me.

Intermission!

• The round sunglasses of the ’90s!
• “Satan wants me to leave you alone!” “We both want you to leave me alone!”
• “Great, the rats have their own jacuzzi.”
• The bread making a clunk when he puts it down