Better than the first but still some flaws

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 2007)

I was one of the minority that enjoyed the first FF movie albeit on a guilty level. I also agreed with the majority of criticism thrown at it but still found it relatively inoffensive despite all this. It had a level of hokeyness that sometime worked for it and sometimes against it. I'll admit also that some of the dialog was terrible (and it hasn't got much better here either)and some of the action just silly (that hasn't changed either although it is better in the second one). I thought it an OK setup for a franchise that entertained on a really base level.
**MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD** Well I had really low expectations for this one since there were a lot of reviews panning it all over the place for various different reasons from crappy FX to deviation from source material. I actually found it to be really enjoyable and much better than the first one. There were still flaws, some pretty major but nothing that I really felt spoiled the film. The biggest bug bear is bound to be the representation of Galactus, basically he's just a big cloud although there are a few times where you can see a hint of the old comic book Galactus but they're like blink and you've missed them. They could have gotten away with having him more obviously in the centre of the cloud at the end and that would have satisfied most people. It made more sense to have Galactus in the form he is in here but I felt they could have alluded more to the old Galactus as well, you know, for fans, the people this movie is surely mostly aimed at if it wants to make any money.
The other gripe people will have with this movie is the whole power swapping thing. Yes it's silly but it did make me laugh and would have worked if it hadn't been such a big deal at the end and they'd just left it as a silly gag that you could have forgotten about later.
There's also continuity errors galore. We see countless shots of the Silver Surfer flying around knocking out power grids etc yet when he's being chased through the tunnel by the Torch the cars are all mysteriously working fine (unless I missed something). There's other things that anyone paying even a bit of attention will be able to point out, the biggest offender being **BIG SPOILER** when the Surfer seems to off Galactus so easily at the end after earlier saying that he had no choice but to be his herald as it meant his world was spared. Why didn't he just do what he did at the end of the movie? **END SPOILER**. I have a feeling that he is not so easily dealt with in the comic mythology and that the end of the movie was a contrivance bunged in there by the writers and film makers because they really didn't know what to do with the character. However it is left slightly ambiguous so you can kind of make up your own explanation. There is room for a bit of license on the part of the viewer.
FX are generally pretty good across the board, they really nailed the look and character of the Silver Surfer although the lip sync on some of his CGI is a bit crummy. Jessica Alba still seems a bit miscast in her role but it's not too annoying. I think Gruffud fits the nerdy scientist role of Reed Richards pretty well. Chiklis as the Thing I've always thought was good casting although his acting as the Thing is better than his role in his human guise. Johnny Storm annoyed me a bit in the first movie, he was just a mouthy disrespectful punk that thought he knew it all. Here he's much the same although not quite as annoying and I really felt a smug satisfaction when he got lumbered with the Things powers.
All the characters here have clearly had more time to get used to their powers with Alba being able to make other things invisible (was that in the comics?) and being able to explode people with internally generated forcefields (although we don't see that). Now onto Dr Doom. I'm not really sure why he was in the movie except as build up to the scene where **SPOILER** he get some of the Power Cosmic from the Surfers board. Just seems they needed another antagonist in there to fill a few minutes in an action scene. His character really doesn't develop at all and he still is nowhere near the Doom people will know from the comics.
I also have to say that the film did an admirable (if not always successful) job at juggling all the characters here. We have four heroes and three villains and, with the exception of Doom, they feel they all fit well. Something I felt Spiderman 3 failed to achieve.
In fact I felt I preferred this movie to Spiderman 3 which I just found tedious and crowded