Project Power

Like many, I spent a large chunk of my childhood fantasizing about having a super-power, and what I'd do with that power once I'd mastered it. 

Flight? Flying would be a neat sensation -- the first few times, anyway -- and get me across town faster. But as my lone superpower? Meh. 

Super speed? I couldn't afford the grocery bill necessary for maintaining the metabolism required for that lifestyle. 

Invisibility? Fantasizing about that super-power always reminds me of a Porky's movie. 

Super-Intelligence? Comic book characters with super-IQs always dress in nerdy costumes (see Mr. Terrific's "fair play" costume branding).

Super-Elasticity? See Invisibility. 

Project Power, the Netflix original starring Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Dominique Fishback, shows us what our world might be like if a drug existed that would give you super-powers for five minutes. 

5 minutes. 

Project Power pretends to be a sci-fi flick about super-heroes, and there is some of that in the plot about a pill that gives enhanced animal-based powers to users. But really, the movie is a standard about a man fighting against overwhelming odds to find his kidnapped daughter. The plot is predictable, the script melodramatic, and the whole thing underachieves. The story builds to a dramatic super-powered fight where a character's power is revealed to be that of a  . . .  wait for it . . . pistol shrimp.

I prefer the power of invisibility.