One of the worst movies I've ever paid money to see

Rating: 1/10 (15 June 2007)

It's been 30 years since Star Wars rewrote the action movie rulebook. In the intervening years we've been treated to a whole slew of great SF movies. Comic books and graphic novels have been especially well represented, with Batmen, Supermen, and Spidermen showing us how action movies are supposed to be made. Last night, we were treated to an example of how not to make an action movie. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is not just the opposite of a great action movie, it is the opposite of decent film-making of any kind. The ways in which this movie goes wrong can be measured by the different crafts that go in to the making of all movies. The script, the actual words that these poor actors are forced to utter, are among the worst of any mainstream American movie I've ever seen. To call them trite is to undersell the vapidity of the sentiments expressed by dialogue. The emptiness of the script is compounded by some of the worst directing ever. The awfulness of the dialogue is brought in to relief by the agonizingly slow pacing that gives the viewer way too much time to contemplate the inanity that comes out of each character's mouth.
The special effects are just plain cheap. They're Star Trek: TMP kinda bad. It would take a studio with an awful lot of contempt for the audience to settle for what passes as CGI in this misbegotten mess.
I'm not sure who this film was made for. If it's made for kids, the studio may be in for a bit of a disappointment. The great crop of movies American kids have been raised on will likely have prepared them for something a lot better than this. Kids aren't stupid. They know when they're being sold an inferior product and there's plenty of good diversions out there for them to have to settle for grade D crap like FF:ROTSS.