Watchable But Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (30 May 2014)

Another disappointing Fantastic Four movie. The returning cast is fine, I guess, considering how the characters are written. Johnny's a bit more of a jerk, Ben's a bit dumber, and Reed has a stupid dance scene that should have resulted in someone being fired. But most of that is the script and direction, not the actors. For her part, Jessica Alba portrays Sue as less of a ditz this time around. Although the ridiculous blue contacts are distracting and unnecessary. Julian McMahon is back as someone they're calling Dr. Doom. They conveniently find a reason to allow him to act without a mask or makeup. Andre Braugher has a thankless role as a clichéd Army general with an ax to grind with Reed.
The special effects are spotty. Sometimes they are passable, sometimes dreadful, but never are they great. The Silver Surfer is a CGI character interacting with flesh & blood actors in a real-world environment and the tech just wasn't there in 2007 to pull that off convincingly. At all times, you are very aware that he is fake. It's like having a cartoon mixed in with real people, a la Roger Rabbit. This is not the fault of Doug Jones or Laurence Fishburne. The biggest disappointment is in the presentation of Galactus. They obviously didn't have the budget to do Galactus properly so instead we get some vague cloud entity thing. It's the kind of thing comic book fans learned to expect from television shows like Smallville with limited resources, not a major film release.
This movie is a real disservice to the original Lee & Kirby Galactus story, perhaps the best of all Fantastic Four stories. It highlights a fundamental problem with Tim Story's Fantastic Four movies. For what he gets right about the characters (the family dynamic, some of the characterizations, a lighter tone), he gets more wrong. There is never a sense of the fantastic about these films. They don't explore anything, nor do they introduce new characters, worlds, and ideas in any kind of impressive way. They're just people with super powers doing stuff. With very little effort, you could change the names and powers of the characters and not alter the story in any significant way. On the positive side, the movie does have a lot of humor and the main cast are likable actors all. I just wish they had been given a decent script and a serious attempt at making a quality FF movie instead of this. It's watchable but nothing better than that.