Not Quite Fantastic

Rating: 5/10 (22 June 2007)

i eagerly looked forward to watching the new fantastic 4 (the rise of the silver surfer). maybe that's why i was so sorely disappointed with the end result. the story picks up from where the last one left off, with the imminent wedding of Reed and Sue, Johnny taking to the attention like a duck to water, and ben now coming to terms and even enjoying his role as the big rock. when weird craters and environmental anomalies start cropping up around the world, with the silver surfer's arrival to earth, reed is sucked into the military's investigation, while juggling his upcoming wedding. the movie starts off at a nice pace without really heading anywhere up to the wedding. there's a nice feel to the movie with light heartedness and beautiful special effects. the wedding is interrupted by the silver surfer and a really climactic first meeting between him and johnny. doc doom returns in ultimately boring fashion and his first meeting with the silver surfer results in him teaming up with the fantastic 4. the rest of the story pendulates between the attack on silver surfer, then doc doom and then galactus. this is where the movie lost me. it wasn't balanced. it took so long to get to the battle with the silver surfer and it didn't climax with a rather tame capturing of the silver surfer. the feelgood moment of the movie follows with sue learning of the surfer's origins and immeditely followed by the expected betrayal by doc doom. then doc doom is the bad guy. this leads straight into the battle scene and the story just gets lost in ANOTHER really boring battle scene. doc doom is beaten rather easily after johnny absorbs everyone's powers. then galactus arrives. in about a minute he's defeated. a power that EATS PLANETS beaten in a minute by a silver surfer reunited with his board. the movie overall just didn't do it for me. the humour was corny which worked most of the time but just got really lame after half an hour. the battles were really really really boring. it didn't make the audience feel the constantly shifting balance of power and i don't think i ever felt that the good guys would lose. it's a tried and tested method and everyone does it - because it works. the special effects were brilliant. but that's a given in today's world of movies. and it shouldn't be highlighted as a thing to see the movie for. the acting was OK. nothing bad about it and it kept within the storyline. they delivered the punchlines when and where needed but the relationship between ben and johnny wasn't punched enough. and jessica alba just looked a bit too made up. in today's movies where so many movies are blamed for being too long, this one was noticeably too short. final comment - it did enough - but barely that - to just keep its head above water - but i cringe in thinking all it could have been.