A welcome improvement on FF1, good fun all the way

Rating: 8/10 (18 June 2007)

I enjoyed it, mostly. First of all, it was ten times better than the groan-awful disappointment of FF1. I know this isn't setting a very high bench-mark, but credit where it's due: they aimed to improve and they did. The story was cleaner, leaner, better directed, easier to follow and easy to enjoy. All the four leads were better and more comfortable in their roles, although personally I still think Jessica Alba was a seriously bad choice. Minor improvements all round in terms of art direction, set design, make-up (The Thing is slightly better this time around) and costume. As for the SFX... brilliant in places, acceptable-to-good most of the time, just a few puzzling rough edges (they still haven't quite got how to portray Reed stretching, and it still looks painfully obvious where the actor ends and the CGI takes over).
The Surfer himself was quite a success, I thought. Having seen the early trailers, I was concerned that no matter how well he was done, he would suffer in comparison with all our happy memories of the silver robot from Terminator 2. It turns out not so. The Surfer works very well on screen, and was captivating enough (with enough 'presence') to make me forget about the Terminator movie and just enjoy him as a character in his own right. * Very minor spoiler * I really liked the fact that we got to see the Surfer in his normal, super-powered form and his tarnished, grayish, less shiny, de-powered form. I thought this was a cute touch, and worked very well.
Anyone expecting anything other than mindless fun, comic-book action and eye candy-a-plenty is mad. That's all it aims to be and all it could aim to be. And on that basis, I'd say the makers have delivered. 8 out of 10 if in a generous mood.