Tim Allen has been a successful actor for decades, primarily making his name in comedy and children’s entertainment. He’s known for his time on the sitcoms Home Improvement and Last Man Standing and voicing Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story franchise. And, of course, we can’t forget when he took on the role of St. Nick himself in the Santa Clause movies. He even played an excellent villain.
By all accounts, a kid’s superhero flick would fit nicely into Allen’s repertoire. He may not be the first name that comes to mind when picturing a crime-fighting, world-saving, tights-wearing hero, but the concept for his 2006 movie Zoom: Academy for Superheroes had all the right ingredients to be a success — a leader with a dark past, a team of kids with superpowers to train, and an enemy to conquer.
Zoom was directed by Peter Hewitt, fresh off his 2004 live-action Garfield movie, which was similarly panned (though, for some reason, Roger Ebert was a fan). That film was nonetheless a success, grossing more than $200 million off of a $50 million budget. So at the least, Hewitt had a box office record behind him coming into Zoom.
Unfortunately, the project was a massive disaster, only grossing $12.5M against a $75.6M budget and earning a dismal 5% on Rotten Tomatoes. Nearly every aspect of the movie was a target for critics and audiences alike, including the convoluted plot, immature humor, unlikable and underdeveloped characters, and miscast roles.
What Is ‘Zoom’ About?

Zoom

1
/5

Release Date

August 11, 2006

Runtime

86 minutes

Director

Peter Hewitt

Based on the children’s book Amazing Adventures from Zoom’s Academy by former Disney/Warner Bros. animator Jason Lethcoe, screenwriters Adam Rifkin and David Berenbaum had decent source material to work from. However, it seems the problems began right from the beginning with disagreements between Allen, the production team, and the studio about what tone the film should take, and everything devolved from there.

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In the movie, Tim Allen plays Jack Shepard, also known as Captain Zoom, a former superhero who has lost his power of superhuman speed. The narrative of the film requires a backstory — the first red flag — which explains that Zoom and his brother Connor (Kevin Zegers), another superhero called Concussion, were part of a government operation called Team Zenith, tasked with protecting the world from threats.
This was before the U.S. military experimented on the team with Gamma-13, radiation which resulted in Concussion’s psychotic break. He then murdered his entire team before Zoom was forced to push him into a vortex, ostensibly killing him and losing his own powers in the process. If that seems like a confusing story with several plot holes, you would be correct.
The meat of the movie occurs when an uncooperative Zoom is brought in to train the new Team Zenith: Houdini (Michael Cassidy), a teenager with powers of invisibility and clairvoyance; Wonder (Kate Mara), a teenager with telekinesis; Mega Boy (Spencer Breslin), an overweight boy who can inflate parts of his body at will; and Princess (Ryan Newman), a little girl with superhuman strength. Courteney Cox is cast as a nerdy psychologist named Dr. Marsha Holloway, who is brought on to work with the team and later reveals her own superpower — blowing rainbow-colored blasts of wind.

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Tensions rise between the kids and Zoom, whose bitterness threatens to poison the group. Throughout training, the adults and children all act exceptionally vile toward one another, with few redeeming moments. Eventually, they learn that Concussion has been trapped in a dimensional rift and will soon be returning to Earth, which coincides with the revelation that the military intends to expose the kids to Gamma-13 as a distraction so they can test new weaponry on Concussion. Zoom suddenly grows a heart (and magically gets his powers back?) so he can save the Team Zenith kids and his brother.
How Did ‘Zoom’ Fall Flat?

Zoom’s narrative makes little sense, but it’s really the movie’s tone that hinders it right out of the gate. As Tim Allen explained to KSAT, “I helped write that movie. It was very different in script form, much darker than when it came out, and the studio and powers that be decided to make it into a family movie.” The actor also claimed in other interviews that the project was originally set up to be a parody. These conflicting approaches led to a movie not dark enough to be taken seriously and not funny enough to entertain kids or adults, leaving nothing but lazy punchlines and a boring story in its wake. Rather than taking a satirical approach to superhero movies, Zoom instead earnestly employs all the elements it’s supposedly trying to parody, resulting in a straight-up bad movie.
‘Zoom’ Suffered From Bad Jokes and Terrible Characters

The humor in Zoom is crude at best and offensive at worst, relying on fart jokes and pratfalls (at one point, Chevy Chase is sprayed in the face by a skunk). Mega Boy’s role is primarily to be the target of jokes about his weight, and Princess is so piercingly annoying and blatantly rotten that she’s almost unwatchable. Courteney Cox is far from believable as a geek, even as she yells at the children to stay away from her mint-condition comic book collection. One of the group’s adventures is taking a spaceship through a Wendy’s drive-thru, which is arguably more exciting than the rest of the movie.

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While gearing Zoom toward a kid-friendly audience explains some of the film’s immaturity (even the jokes are borderline insulting to children’s intelligence), the complete lack of depth makes the characters seem one-dimensional and takes away the audience’s ability to care about what happens to them. You would think that Zoom believing he’s at fault for his own brother’s death would have a significant effect on him, but it’s treated as mere backstory. As is the fact that Concussion killed the entire previous Zenith team, including Zoom’s girlfriend. We also get few insights into the kids’ lives outside of training, and their lack of development makes their fate immaterial to viewers.
‘Zoom’ Tried (and Failed) to Emulate Other Movies

Sony Pictures Releasing

Another major issue that critics had with Zoom was its similarity to other superhero projects. The Incredibles, arguably Pixar’s best movie and one of the most successful kid’s superhero franchises, was released in 2004. By the time Zoom came out a few years later, everything they were trying to accomplish had been done before — and done better. Tim Allen even addressed this issue in his interview with IGN, acknowledging that their production was hindered due to all the restraints that were put on them. He said:

“They were saying you can’t have this … because they own every single superhero attribute. You can’t have a guy wearing glasses in a movie with one eye or something. It was weird so we’d have to change the script all the time. So it was a real struggle to keep it a satire and a parody and have a through line that kids and adults would enjoy.”

Another project that Zoom was compared to was the 1999 sci-fi satire Galaxy Quest, which Tim Allen also starred in alongside Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman. Intended as an affectionate parody of Star Trek and similar shows, Galaxy Quest was funny and well-received by fans, ultimately becoming a cult classic. In fact, it is so beloved that Paramount+ is developing a series based on the movie. Perhaps Allen was attempting to recreate this phenomenon with Zoom, but its ultimate failure suggests he probably should have left well enough alone.
Luckily, Allen hung up his superhero tights for good and went on to have an extremely successful career in the decades since Zoom. In 2025, he returned to the world of sitcoms with ABC’s hit series Shifting Gears, in a role that’s much more his speed.