Film / My Super Ex-Girlfriend

He wanted a break... Now she wants to break him.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a 2006 Super Hero Romantic Comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman.

Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) is your basic everyman, who unwittingly ends up dating Superheroine G-Girl's alter ego, Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman). He finds out her secret, but soon also discovers that she's a Clingy Jealous Girl and breaks up with her for being controlling and dangerous.

She doesn't take it very well, especially when he starts dating his co-worker Hannah Lewis (Anna Faris). Meanwhile, her Arch-Enemy Prof. Bedlam (Eddie Izzard) hatches a plan to use this domestic dispute to De-power her, and enlists Matt to spring the trap.

---

My Super Ex-Girlfriend provides examples of:

• Accidental Pervert: A Running Gag has Matt looking like he's doing perverted things with Hannah, making his Straw Feminist boss mad at him and Jenny to be incredibly jealous. Although at least one time he really was staring at Hannah's butt.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Jenny acquires this along with her superpowers and became G-Girl, leaving poor Barry alone and embittered to become Prof. Bedlam. Although considering the off-hand way she states she chose to lose her virginity to Barry, "just to get it out of the way", apparently never bothering to notice that he was completely in love with her, heavily implies she was somewhat of a self-centered jerkass before she got her powers.
• All Is Well That Ends Well: The movie's ending is treated as such. Jenny ruins Matt's career, attempted to kill him AND wrecked his car. She offers to pay for the car she ruined. He's somehow okay with that. Considering she threw a Shark at him though, he probably considers himself lucky to be still breathing! It's obvious that he'd be Bullying a Dragon if he continued to press the issue and even Matt's not that stupid.
• Anti-Hero: Of the Good Is Not Nice variety. Aside from being a Super Hero G-Girl is, to put it bluntly, a selfish entitled jerk and a psychotic Yandere at worst.
• Alliterative Name: G-Girl's Secret Identity is named Jenny Johnson. It gets a Lampshade Hanging near the beginning, when she introduces herself to Matt.
  Matt: Jenny Johnson! Wonderful name. You got the whole alliteration thing going.
• Animal Assassin: G-Girl throws a live shark through Matt's bedroom window, after she finds out he slept with Hannah.
• Applied Phlebotinum: The source of G-Girl's superpowers. (Specifically, radiation from a meteorite that crashed near her school.)
• Apologetic Attacker: Matt apologizes to G-Girl for taking part in Bedlam's trap to De-power her.
  Matt: I'm really sorry. But you did throw a shark at me, you know.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • The shark G-Girl throws at Matt shouldn't have survived so long out of water or been able to pursue him, aside from whether or not it would've survived being thrown headfirst into a wall.
  • There's also the question of how Matt's bones were able to withstand sex with women with superhuman strength though their strength destroyed beds and walls.
• Berserk Button: Do not call Jenny "Crazy!"
• Betty and Veronica: Eventually, Matt finds himself torn between his coworker and longtime crush Hannah and his more powerful and outspoken girlfriend Jenny.
• Beware the Superman: Particularly if she is a Clingy Jealous Girl and you're planning to break up with her.
• Breast Expansion: The flashback scene where Jenny gets her powers makes it unmistakably clear that they include the Most Common Superpower.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": "G" is for G-Girl, who is notable for not having just one costume but (being a hip New Yorker) a whole closetful, each distinguished only by a "G" motif. Interestingly, she never explains what the G stands for.

• Captain Ersatz: G-Girl is an Expy of Supergirl, albeit with a different personality, complete with a Expy of Lex Luthor in Prof. Bedlam.
• Casanova Wannabe: Matt's friend Vaughn is constantly trying to woo women during the film, but only manages to repulse them. He finally gets laid after the credits.
• Cat Fight: G-Girl and Hannah get into one after the latter gets superpowers, with Vaughn getting excited at the prospect of a "girl fight".
• Chainsaw Good: When G-Girl reveals her secret identity to Matt, she makes him swear that he would rather have a chainsaw shoved up his ass than tell. When Matt imagines he tells his friend, she brandishes a chainsaw telling him he was warned.
• Clark Kenting: Wig + Nerd Glasses = Instant disguise! Averted when Matt later discovers that his initial assessment of her was correct after all. Jenny's civilian personality isn't an act and she really is an emotionally unstable, neurotic, basket-case!
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Jenny, who grows increasingly jealous towards Matt's close friendship with his coworker (and one-sided crush) Hannah. This eventually drives Matt away from her.
• Corrupted Character Copy: G-Girl is an expy of Supergirl (got her powers from an alien meteor instead of being an alien, has a Kryptonite Factor of the same meteor that empowered her, but otherwise the same basic Flying Brick). The film asks "What if Supergirl was an insecure, neurotic, overly-controlling woman with a fondness for Disproportionate Retribution?"
• Confession Triggers Consummation: After Matt confesses his love to Hannah, she kisses him and they spend the night together.
• Dating Catwoman: In the end, G-Girl and Professor Bedlam. He's implied to have switched sides though.
• Destructo-Nookie: Given G-Girl's and then Hannah's powers, sex tends to lead to damage to the bed. And the walls.
• Disability-Negating Superpower: The Magic Meteor that gave Jenny her superpowers also corrects her eyesight, changes her breast size and makes her more conventionally attractive in general.
• Don't Look At Me: Jenny (as G-Girl) says this word for word to Matt after she saves his life as a means to keep both her normal identity and superhero alter ego self a secret from Matt. Doubles as Jerk Ass With A Heart Of Gold.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The Movie. The film basically portrays a manipulative, controlling, physically and emotionally abusive relationship enhanced with superpowers, as a comedy. It's still put in a negative light, of course, but a Gender Swap would be the stuff of nightmares. Though also somewhat subverted; while people think at first that Matt must have done something to have G-Girl after him, once they realize that G-Girl is only ruining his life because he broke up with her, her public opinion goes down the toilet.
• Everyone Can See It: Between Matt and Hannah.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Includes the main guy going from the superheroine G-Girl to his crush, Hannah. What is odd is that, while G-Girl's hair turned blonde with her new powers, Hannah's hair actually turns from blonde to redhead. It seems the power turns redheads blonde and blondes into redheads.
• Evil Former Friend: G-Girl and her Arch-Enemy Prof. Bedlam used to be Childhood Friends, but their relationship fell apart once she gained her powers.
• Eye Beams: On lower settings, they're useful for Face Doodling. Nothing wrong with shooting people in the head, right?
• Finger-Suck Healing: Hannah sucks on Matt's finger to remove a splinter.
• Flying Brick: G-Girl has the classic Super Hero flight/invulnerability/strength combo.
• Harmless Villain: Professor Bedlam. He's never seen doing anything overtly villainous, making his status as a supposed supervillain almost something of an Informed Attribute. While he does leave Matt dangling off of the Statue of Liberty, considering he intended for G-Girl to rescue him, it makes it obvious that he knew he was never in any real danger at all. Likewise, the only person he's implied to have tried to kill is G-Girl, who is completely invulnerable. If anything, it is heavily implied he became a "supervillain" just to get her attention.

• Hypocrite: G-Girl’s entire campaign against Matt is fueled by the fact that he dumped her and broke her heart. It turns out that she did the same thing to Barry!
• Hypocritical Humor: Carla. Throughout the film, she practically considers men as always sexually harassing women, and pushing for the woman to file a complaint against the guy despite the guy doing nothing. During the credits, Carla goes up to a male employee and grabs his butt.
• Insult Backfire: Matt calls his friend Vaughn soulless and shallow when he says he'd have sex with a ton of women after breaking up. Vaughn agrees, saying "It is a blessing".
• Internal Reveal: The film doesn't bother hiding Jenny's Secret Identity as G-Girl from the audience, but it still takes almost a third of the film for her to reveal it to Matt.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: After being fired from his job due to Jenny/G-Girl's shenanigans, Matt warns Hannah to stay away from him as he fears Jenny could harm her.

• Karma Houdini: G-girl commits several crimes and receives no punishment for them; her Domestic Abuse of Matt, property damage (destroying Matt's car) and several counts of attempted murder (against Matt), one of which (her stunt with the live Great White Shark) also included animal cruelty and killing an endangered species - Great Whites were declared protected in 1999, when the movie is set in the early 2000's. Of course, it'd be pretty difficult to punish someone with her powers.
• Kick the Dog: G-girl throws a shark at Matt and his new lover. Essentially G-girl took a fish out of water, threw it head-first into a wall. The fact that said fish was a Great White Shark is offset by its brutal death and the fact that at the time of filming Great White Sharks were an endangered and protected species.
• Kryptonite Factor: Played with. G-Girl's "kryptonite" comes from the same meteor that gave her her powers in the first place.
• Likes Clark Kent, Hates Superman: Turned completely on its head and deconstructed entirely. Matt initially goes out with the meek Jenny not knowing she was the adventurous and popular G-Girl, but eventually grows repulsed by how insanely possessive and selfish she is in both her super and secret identities. After all, personality flaws don't disappear just because someone happens to be a superhero in secret.
• Look Both Ways: G-Girl rescues a girl who wandered into the street without looking, rebuking her for forgetting about this... and then promptly gets hit by a car herself, after she fails to as well. Being Nigh-Invulnerable, she's unharmed.
• Love Triangle:
  • Jenny/Matt/Hannah.
  • Also Bedlam/Jenny/Matt.

• Magic Meteor: The source of G-Girl's powers was a meteorite that crashed near the school she lived.
• Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Sex with Jenny ends up being the Destructo-Nookie kind due to her powers, and while Matt finds that the sex is amazing it still ends up hurting him a lot.
  Jenny: [after breaking his bed during sex] I'm sorry. I'll get you a new one.
  Matt: [in a pained voice] A bed or a penis?
• Man of Wealth and Taste: Lampshaded.
  Professor Bedlam: Please, I am not super. I am not a villain. I'm just a regular man like yourself with 10,000 more money, intelligence and taste.
• Mile-High Club: G-Girl has sex with Matt while flying him around the city, and he says the trope by name, calling it another version of the same thing (as they fly due to her superpower, rather than a plane).
• Mirror Character: Despite G-Girl being considered the "hero" and Professor Bedlam being the "villain", both of them are very much alike in the sense they are both willing to go to the extremes to take "revenge" on the ones that broke their heart.
• Modesty Bedsheet: Used when Matt sleeps with Jenny and Hannah, although the characters are still obviously clothed underneath the sheets.
• Most Common Superpower: Exposure to Green Rocks made G-Girl grow a few cup sizes.

• Murder the Hypotenuse: G-Girl throws a shark into Matt's bedroom after he spends the night with Hannah and later explicitly threatens to kill her several times.
• Naughty by Night: Vaughn thinks Jenny is this on first seeing her, saying that though she looks like a librarian on the outside, inside there's a wild side. He's more right than he knows. As her Super Hero alter ego G-Girl, she's revealed to be a very enthusiastic lover she accidentally injures Matt and destroys his bed with her Super-Strength.
• Nice Girl: Hannah, who gets G-Girl's powers at the end, and, unlike her, is actually a good girlfriend to Matt.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: G-Girl seems completely impervious to any damage. Even her hair.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Had Matt not gone after the purse snatcher on Jenny's behalf, she would never have gone on to throw his life upside down, wreck his car, ruin his career and throw a shark at him.
• Not Good with Rejection: On one side there is Matt, a normal guy. On the other side, there is Jenny Johnson AKA G-Girl, a Supergirl Expy. They were an item at first, but then Jenny became more neurotic, aggressive and controlling. So Matt breaks off the relationship and... she does not take the rejection well. She terrorizes his life, sends his car into orbit, and throws a shark at him.
• Oblivious to Love: G-Girl thought she and Bedlam drifted apart after she got her powers when really her newfound popularity caused her to unwittingly ignore him. He became a supervillain to get her to notice him again.
• Punchclock Hero: G-Girl appears to have become a superhero simply because that's what expected you should do with superpowers, rather than out of any apparent heroic urge or instinct.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: A super-powered one at that.
• Red-and-White Comedy Poster: The poster makes use of this, with the white background and the title and credits being in red.
• Rescue Romance: Jenny falls for Matt because he's the first person who "rescued her" by helping her with a robber who stole her purse. She didn't actually need his help, but was touched by the gesture.
• Right Through His Pants: Matt doesn't remove his clothes when he spends time in bed with Jenny or Hannah after his love confession.
• Romantic Comedy: With superheroes!
• Sassy Black Woman: Carla, in a weird pseudo-Straw Feminist sort of way.
• A Scar to Remember: Jenny scars Matt's forehead by burning the word "Dick" into it with heat vision as revenge for calling her crazy.
• Sex Goddess: Played With. G-Girl/Jenny herself believes she's amazing in bed due to her powers and proves it when she and Matt have Destructo-Nookie sex. But while Matt agrees she's great at sex, he's not as happy about how much she ends up hurting him with her powers.
  Matt: She broke my bed.
  Vaughn: Wow.
  Matt: Busted it to pieces. I'm gonna see her again today.
  Vaughn: What are you talking about? No! You have sex with her once and then you move on.
  Matt: Not if you get on the greatest ever roller coaster, you don't. Believe me, you get right back in that line.
• Sexual Karma: Played With and Played for Laughs. G-Girl, who is a very troubled person, is both amazing and awful in bed due to her powers. While Matt says it feels amazing, since she doesn't bother to hold back her strength during sex, she also ends up breaking his bed and hurting him accidentally, which she's unapologetic for. By contrast, when he Matt has sex with pure and innocent Hannah in the middle of the film, it's portrayed as romantic if fulfilling, even if not as eventful. ... But then this is subverted when we see Matt and Hannah have sex, after Hannah gets superpowers, in exactly the same way as Matt and G-Girl used to have sex, but even worse: instead of breaking the bed, they go through the neighbor's wall.
• Shameful Strip: G-Girl uses her Super-Speed to quickly strip Matt completely naked while he's in the middle of a business presentation without anyone noticing her. He has a Naked Freak-Out and uses Hand-or-Object Underwear to cover himself, but his Straw Feminist boss still assumes he's an exhibitionist pervert and fires him.
• Shamu Fu: Again, G-Girl threw a LIVING shark at her ex. That'll teach 'em!
• Shout-Out:
  • Vaughn yells "Eye of the tiger!" while trying to encourage Matt to ask Jenny out.
  • Jenny threatens to kick Hannah to "Munchkinland".
• Shaped Like Itself: When Vaughn is describing G-Girl using her Super-Speed to turn herself into a tornado as "spinning like a spinny thing."
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: Professor Bedlam's real name is Barry Edward Lambert.
• Super-Speed: Jenny as G-Girl can move at accelerated levels of super speed.
• Super-Strength: Jenny can lift cars, sharks, human beings, missiles, anything.
• Suppressed Rage: When Matt first mentions "needing space", Jenny's OK with it... until he mentions dating other people, then she slams the knife she is chopping carrots with into the board. And then frighteningly, bends it with her bare hands.
• Threatening Shark: When G-Girl turns on Matt, she throws a shark at him. It almost kills him, despite his apartment being on dry land.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Matt and his co-worker Hannah have a lot of this, which makes Jenny incredibly jealous. Considering they do hook up shortly after Matt breaks up with her, she wasn't entirely paranoid.
• Unstable Powered Woman: After becoming G-Girl, Jenny becomes a selfish, possessive, and controlling jerk.

• What the Hell, Hero?: After people find out that G-Girl is going after Matt just because he broke up with her (rather than committing any sort of crime) they are much less forgiving of her deeds towards him.
• With Friends Like These...: Vaugh is the stereotypical Jerkass Romantic Comedy Best Friend whose only worry is about getting himself and his friend laid, while treating all women as a Lust Object. He's not even remotely worried when it seems like Hannah was seemingly killed in the finale, just telling Matt he needs to "get over it".
• With Great Power Comes Great Hotness: An effect of the Green Rocks, Jenny became a Head-Turning Beauty when she gained her powers.
• Workout Fanservice: Matt and Vaugh have their chats while they work out, and both Vaugh and the camera are constantly ogling the random attractive women doing workouts, with several gratuitous close-up shots of them.
• Yandere: G-Girl vows to destroy the protagonist's life after he breaks up with her.

---