It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! (1975)

Director: Jack Regas

Writers: David Newman, Robert Benton, Romeo Muller

Composer: Charles Strouse

Starring: David Wilson, Lesley Ann Warren, Loretta Swit, Kenneth Mars, Gary Owens, George Chandler, Stuart Goetz, Danny Goldman, Geoffrey Horne, Phil Leeds, Harvey Lembeck, Michael Lembeck, Allen Ludden, Al Molinaro, Irene Tedrow, Malachi Throne, David Wayne, Lou Wills Jr.

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The funniest Superhero story ever!

Plot: TV adaptation of the campy 1960s Broadway musical about the Man of Steel, his friends, his enemies, and his self-image problems.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? Do re mi fa so la ti NO.

The story goes that this started out as a Broadway music in '66 that ran for 129 performances before it closed.  The reviews were pretty good and it even got three Tony nominations for acting.  Not bad.  So for whatever reason (money, anyone?) this TV special was filmed for everyone for all of future mankind to watch and, gulp, enjoy this piece of entertainment.  I gotta say, despite being painfully unfunny (the humor is wayyyy over the top), I laughed out loud a couple of times.  And now, just an hour later, I can't remember what was so funny.  The songs are OK at best and the singing is anywhere from great (Leslie Ann Warren is terrific) to bad (David Wilson struggles but powers through it).  You could make the case that Wilson was most courageous knowing that music is his kryptonite.  I hope he didn't die from it.  One thing I enjoyed was seeing A LOT of names and faces familiar to me.  I'm familiar and fans of literally half the cast.  Even game show hose Allen Ludden (I watched A LOT of games shows as a kid in the 70s) shows up as Perry White.  For that reason alone there was no way I was going to miss seeing this but it's not worth watching and it's often eye-rolling painful.  It's kind of funny that I had the LP of this decades ago and never once listened to it.  That pleases me now that I've seen it.