Basic material creates plenty of dull sections that the technically impressive but rather uninteresting action cannot compensate for (mild suggestive spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (15 June 2007)

Since they got their powers, the Fantastic Four have also got something else: media savvy. Johnny is running out of room for sponsors logos and the oft-delayed wedding of Sue Storm and Reed Richards is the talk of the country. For these reasons the group seem a little distracted whenever a galactic anomaly seems to be affecting the earth. Undeterred, Reed continues with his plans to get married, although does take the time to build a device to track the anomaly. The device works of course but it does have the unwanted side-effect of bringing the "anomaly" to the party in the form of an alien with great power on a surf-board style craft who it seems cannot be stopped in his mission to deliver worlds for destruction by his master.
For some reason I decided to go and see this at a midnight screening (12:01) on the day it came out. I think that it was perhaps because I hadn't read any negative reviews (or any reviews really) that I hoped it would be good and live up to the trailer. Sadly it didn't. We start off with a soapy plot involving the marriage of Richards and Storm, which is dull. This continues as Johnny learns that he is a bit too self-centred and there are other such plot threads kicking around. Unfortunately most of this stuff feels written by committee as it is pretty simplistic fare. This has the knock-on effect of making most of the dialogue and narrative-driven scenes feel slow and, occasionally, painful to get through  which is a problem because there are plenty of them.
The only slight exception is the story of the surfer himself, which does have a bit of pathos lurking in the background  if only the writers didn't seem to be working so far to show it with the least amount of effort required. This leaves the action sequences, which, let's be honest, is what we're all here for. Firstly, they mostly LOOK great  with only some of the stretching effects looking a bit weak. However there is a lot of time between the sequences and the writers seemed to be unable to really produce more than one or maybe two solid sequences  which again leaves us with the weak writing to fill the gaps in between. Personally I also found the action to be quite uninvolving; I never felt tension or excitement and wasn't drawn into the story by the action  which really I should have been. The initial fight with the surfer is good but you've seen all that in the trailer already. This leaves a bit more of the same in different locations (but with diminished impact) and the challenge of how to make a climatic battle against a massive space cloud seem exciting and be a great close to the action (and here's a clue  they can't. The ending is a big damp squib).
With the weak material it is no surprise that the cast struggle. Gruffudd is actually OK as he has loosened up and seems more confident in the "lead" than he was before. Evans is quite fun but he is unconvincing when the switch is flicked and he is asked to "look sad and say d'oh" to convey depth that isn't there for him on the page. Chiklis is amusing but this is all the film uses him for and it isn't really fair on him that he has become no more than a comedy character. McMahon is OK but the script hands him such a weak pantomime villain that it is hard to take him seriously  he has no time to build and his plan is obvious from his first appearance on screen. Jones does good work yet again behind heavy makeup/CGI and he had a good physical presence. Fishburne's voice is a pretty good fit but he has little to say and thus no time to bring out character in his voice. Braugher was solid and Washington plays blind well enough. Which just leaves Alba  blonde again and bland again. USA Today did a piece on her last week, praising her female superhero for not being a male fetish character but being clothed in suits like the men and not in skimpy things. Obviously the usual "becomes visible without any clothes on" moment suggests that the paper should have watched the film before commenting, but the bigger problem is that Alba is not a good actress, she is a very pretty model who can say lines well enough to convince in basic scenarios. And this is what she does  says lines without sounding like she is reading them  but not a whole lot more than that. So by hiding her body she makes herself a rather pointless presence; I mean, what do you remember about her from things like Sin City and Into The Blue? Her performance or how great her body was? I'm guessing very few people will say the former.
Overall then, a pretty simplistic summer blockbuster that has no real depth or good material to adequately fill the gaps between the action and nowhere near enough really good action to make up for the gaps between one sequence and the next. I didn't expect Citizen Kane  but I certainly wanted more fun and excitement from it than I got.