Silver Surfer Shines, Fantastic Four Don't

Rating: 7/10 (19 June 2007)

Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer (FFRSS) was a decent comic book movie. The story was decent, and the graphics for the Silver Surfer were most excellent (as Bill and Ted would say). Plus, I really liked the use of Lawrence Fishburne's voice for the Silver Surfer, he was the perfect choice. I honestly wished Silver Surfer got more screen time.
You would think that four super heroes are better than one, but the best scene is when the Human Torch acquired the powers of his team mates and went solo against Dr. Von Doom. And speaking of Von Doom... why bring him back? Were the Fantastic Four short on arch enemies? Nemesies only keep coming back in Saturday morning cartoons that need to keep an enemy to stay on air.
I realize that my moderate admiration of FFRSS is due to the bar being raised too high. Even with the awesome CGI in FFRSS, I wasn't all that interested in the unique abilities of any of the FF with the exception of Johnny Storm (maybe it is the childhood pyromaniac in me). It's just that movies like Spider Man and the X-Men have set a high bar for superhero abilities and even super battles. FFRSS was better than Spider Man 3 and that was only because they didn't make a huge soap opera out of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl's wedding, unlike the drawn out romantic escapade between Peter Parker and M.J.