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Superman Returns is the first Superman movie in almost 20 years, and it's expected to be one of the season's biggest hits.

The last Superman movie was in 1987. There have been TV shows like Smallville and Lois and Clark in the interim.

Superman Returns is not a total re-imagining of a movie franchise like the recent "Batman" film.

This movie takes place, in theory, five years after Superman 2 - you know the one where he fought General Zod.

After hearing that astronomers may have discovered remnants of his home world Krypton, Superman has been in space searching for it. He has missed major world events, including, it's implied, 9/11.

He returns to Earth to find many things have changed - Lois Lane is engaged and has a child, and just won the Pulitizer Prize for an article called Why the World Doesn't Need Superman.

He also finds out that his arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor, was released from prison.

Before you know it, he's saving Lois from an airplane crash, and fighting Luthor over a diabolical land scheme.

In many ways, this is the superhero franchise that has changed the least in its updating.

Director Bryan Singer has called the film a tribute to Richard Donner, who made the first Superman, and it truly is, both in tone, and in the details, like the use of the original music, Brando's famously expensive voiceover, and, even the credits flash like all the other Superman movies.

Superman Returns does feel like an old friend returning - instead of trying to erase our fond memories of the original this film counts on them to get us past some of the script holes. This deep nostalgia is refreshing in a modern superhero world.

The new Superman is played by Brandon Routh. He fits the cape surprisingly well. Like Christopher Reeves in the original, Routh is a virtual unknown, having starred in a TV soaps (One Life to Live), and MOWs previously - although he did have a role in the hideous Karla, but we shouldn't hold that against him.

Routh easily captures the majesty of Superman, although he doesn't portray Clark Kent with the same comic timing as Reeves did.

Perhaps even more importantly, the supporting cast is outstanding, from Kate Bosworth, who lends Lois Lane a sense of gravity absent from the previous incarnation, to Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, who ditched Gene Hackman's nudge-nudge wink-win approach, and instead becomes the menacing villain Luthor needs to be in this day and age. From top to bottom the casting is note perfect.

Superman Returns is directed by Bryan Singer, who made the previous two "X-Men" movies. He has become the Hollywood expert on comic book movies, along with Sam Raimi, who makes the Spiderman films.

Singer's touch is all over this movie. The action set pieces are spectacular, especially the opening airplane rescue, which essentially re-imagines the scene from the first movie, but with a terror and grandeur only made possible by modern special effects.

More noticeable is Singer's ability to make the superhero human - even an alien like Superman. Within the subplot is Superman's relationship with Lois, and her son, which not only adds an emotional depth to the action, but ups the stakes as well, making you move even closer to the edge of your seat during the climax.

The movie is not without faults - there are a couple of story holes that are a bit annoying, especially in a film with such a high degree of attention to detail, but these are easily ignored.

Singer has crafted the quintessential summer blockbuster - a movie that will please almost everyone except the most jaded.

If you were waiting for the first great summer movie of the year, and I certainly was, you don't have to wait anymore. Head to the theatres today, and see that, sometimes even Hollywood can get it right.