Movies / The Meteor Man (1993)

Robert Townsend has managed to build an entire career on the basis of one funny movie (The Hollywood Shuffle)--even though he hasn't had one that was anywhere near as funny since. Case in point: This would-be comedy about an unwilling black superhero. Townsend plays a schoolteacher in a bad Washington, D.C., neighborhood that is controlled by a vicious drug gang (recognizable by their blonde-dyed hair). Then he is hit by a meteor and suddenly finds that he has super strength and can fly (and can read the minds of dogs). But Townsend's writing is surprisingly weak and, despite a cast that includes a mugging Bill Cosby, Eddie Griffin, Robert Guillaume, and sadly miscast James Earl Jones, this movie is never able to get off the ground. --Marshall Fine