a harmless dry heave of a sequel

Rating: 4/10 (20 June 2007)

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Reviewed by Samuel Osborn
It's sad enough when a sequel fails to live up to the quality of its predecessor. But it's an entirely different tragedy when the predecessor, in this case the first Fantastic Four movie, contained no hint of quality to begin with. Its sequel, Rise of the Silver Surfer, is not just unnecessary, but achieves a woeful demotion from the comic book regurgitation of the original. That's right, it's even worse.
Besides the obvious financial potential of a Fantastic Four sequel, the only plausible reason for Rise of the Silver Surfer to be granted the greenlight by its studio is by way of its title character. The Silver Surfer (voiced occasionally by Laurence Fishburne) is admittedly pretty awesome. He careens from outer space as a meteor into Earth's atmosphere, zipping around the globe and impacting the land with various craters in preparation for the planet's destruction. Never mind his humane intentions and fluffy nice guy interior; the Silver Surfer is a certifiable badass. Composed entirely of candied CGI goodness, he looks like the figurine version of Terminator 2's metallic T-1000 propped up on a chrome surfboard. His sequences are the only fantastic thing about this film, making his supreme lack of appearances all the more disappointing. Instead, we're given the likes of Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), who still leads the contest for most stupidly overwrought name for a villain. Von Doom soaks up screen time like a diseased sponge, blocking out any opportunity for the Silver Surfer to perform his titular rise.
Returning to save the world from interplanetary surfers are the aforementioned four. Dr. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffud) again leads the spandexed quartet, now mysteriously engaged to Jessica Alba, playing Sue Storm. Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans return as the big orange rock, Ben Grimm, and the cocky flamer, Johnny Storm. Each actor's performance lives up to the mediocrity of the first Fantastic go-round, with the exception of Michael Chiklis whose delivery has become as lifeless as the rocks he's composed of. Ms. Alba also loses some of her conviction, which probably is just an effect of the difficulty involved in manipulating a face lathered in entire bottles of golden bronzing.
Anyway, the ride isn't very lengthy at a cool 89 minutes and thus can't irritate to its full potential. It's a harmless dry heave of a sequel, amazing sometimes in its technical prowess and also amazing in its complete ineptitude for telling a story. I'd make a sly finishing pun about how un-fantastic Rise of the Silver Surfer is, but I'm sure by now the point is made. This film is bad.
Samuel Osborn