"Fantastic." Really. Better than the first

Rating: 9/10 (15 June 2007)

Yes, you read the above correctly. Call me crazy, or call me an average movie-going American citizen whose expectations were mostly surpassed, but "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" is a fun, action-packed, and occasionally very funny superhero summer movie that remains true to its Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Marvel Comics source material.
Here is another example of a movie sequel done correctly. The first "Fantastic Four" (2005) received mostly negative reviews but was a box office success, enough of a success that Marvel Comics and Twentieth Century Fox thought it would be possible to channel funds into a sequel. Despite occasional flaws in the script and misjudgments on the part of the filmmakers, "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" is mostly another successful entry into the superhero movie genre.
If you remember from the first film, an accident in outer space bestows a vast array of cosmic powers upon five astronauts:

Egghead scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) becomes Mr. Fantastic and is now able to bend any part of his body at will and can give Plastic Man a run for his money.

Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) becomes the Invisible Woman, with the ability to turn invisible and generate forcefields. More technically, she can't become completely invisible, but is able to bend light - nonetheless, it becomes difficult to see her (and sometimes she has to strip to get out of sticky situations).

Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), Sue's hotshot brother, becomes the Human Torch with the ability to engulf his body in flames and can fly.

Lastly, poor Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) is transformed into The Thing, an unsightly rock-monster with the strength of at least 100 men and is pretty much indestructible.

They put personal squabbles aside to unite as the Fantastic Four (as named by the media), and battled their fifth (and former) teammate and first movie nemesis, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), who became Dr. Doom when the accident began to slowly transform him into an angry metal freak with control over electricity. He was defeated, imprisoned in his own metallic body, and sent back to his home country of Latveria in a crate.
In this sequel, Reed Richards and Sue Storm are preparing to tie the knot, in a wedding that's all over the tabloids (and brings back memories of any celebrity wedding within the last seven years, say TomKat). Ben's relationship with blind chick Alicia (Kerry Washington) is off without a hitch, and Johnny is still the player with a different girl under his arm at every social function.
The Fantastic Four also continue their adventures of saving the world at large and being the greatest heroes on the planet. But that's about to change: a malevolent entity from outer space is causing mayhem and destruction all over the world. Reed theorizes that whatever this thing is, it emits incredible amounts of cosmic radiation and destroys all life on all planets wherever it goes in an eight-day time-span. So the Fantastic Four goes right to work to uncover what this thing is.
As you would have it, though, Johnny rushes head-first into the situation and has a face-to-face encounter with the Silver Surfer (played by Doug Jones, voiced by Laurence Fishburne), who is probably the Marvel Comics equivalent of DC Comics' Superman. The encounter leaves Johnny stunned and a bit of a danger to the rest of the team, since he finds he can now transfer his powers to the others. When it's discovered just how big a threat the Silver Surfer is to Earth, Reed's old adversary General Hager (Andre Braugher) contracts the Four to try to get a handle on the Surfer's movements.
Other matters threaten to deteriorate the integrity of the Fantastic Four, however, the biggest being Reed and Sue's desire to get married and finally leave the team and start over with their own family. Needless to say, Johnny and Ben don't take the news lightly. But they'll have to put it all to the side when arch-nemesis Dr. Doom reenters the picture, and they discover they will have to work together to save the world from annihilation by the Silver Surfer. But a series of unexpected events force our heroes to realize that an even bigger threat lies beyond the horizon (G-A-L-A-C-T-U-S), and the Silver Surfer may be our only hope.
I should have stated this a little earlier, but I'm not a huge fan of Marvel's first family, but the "Fantastic Four" movies, as big as they are, they're highly enjoyable in a very simplistic fashion. They're not too big on intelligence but are very skilled in special effects, production values, and overall entertainment. I don't need to say that the acting is all that good, but the four are oddly fitting, and appealing. There's also no real need to get all mushy and stuff here, but you do feel yourself growing attached to this movie family that is as dysfunctional as any TV family you could think of.
For all its faults, a good job was done of establishing the film, with a better-written screenplay by Don Payne and David Frost. Tim Story (returning from his joyful direction of the first film) is again at the helm of another solid and entertaining thrill ride that remains overall faithful to the spirit of its source material. The only major drawback "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" suffers from is that its only newcomer, the titled Silver Surfer, is not very interesting as a movie character. Defined largely by his cosmic powers and Fishburne's out-there creepy voice, little is done to really give him a personality or even make him sympathetic (since he is pretty much a special effect), acting as a herald for a greater evil. But I guess, how many other aliens can almost bring all life on Earth as we know it to an end?
9/10