Shootin' The Tube With The Silver Dude

Rating: 6/10 (25 June 2007)

The Fantastic Four are back in FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER ...dude.
Slipping back into the latest comic-book-to-film wave, director Tony Scott (of the 2005 FANTASTIC FOUR feature) tries to shoot the tube by giving us another character from the original comics.
And the story goes...
Mr. Fantastic, aka Reed Richards/"Stretch" (Ioan Gruffudd), and Sue Storm, aka The Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), are trying, once again, to get married. Interruptions have stifled all attempts at matrimonial bliss and this time it comes from another world. The Silver Dude (voiced by Laurence Fishburn, AKEELAH AND THE BEE) has "surfed" onto Earth to do his master's bidding (see Destroy Planet Plan 101). Breaking through the planet's mantle, The Silver Surfer prepares each planet he visits for the impending arrival of a cloud of ...um ...stuff known as Galactus (the comic book showed this as a giant robot but apparently Tony Scott refused to have any kind of giant robots in his films).
Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) stars as The Human Torch and the first of the fabulous squad to interrupt The Surfer's wild ride. Energy transfers between Silver-Boy and Torch cause fluctuations in Johnny Storm's abilities to light up. Anyone who touches Johnny, too, gets a touch of this transference and is quite funny when Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) trades powers with him for a few short moments.
Mr. Fantastic has to help the military find a way to disable The Silver Surf all while trying to prepare for his wedding. Time is short for both and when The Surfer shows up near Reed and Sue's hitching place, the waves come crashing down on their celebration (bummer, dude).
Racing to save the planet from The Surfer's seemingly incalculable powers, the military enlists surprise, surprise! Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon). You really didn't think he was gone permanently, did you? Victor's able mind and talents help bring Silver-Boy down but oh! you know that ol' Von Doom mind. He's got other plans for The Silver Surfer's powers.
Shortened by nearly 15 minutes from the first film, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer feels lessened in two significant ways. First is that there's almost zero explanation as to how the Silver Surfer became the creature he is. The "love" interest between what was Silver-Dude's woman far, far away doesn't explain much and leaves viewers caring little about him. The second is the rushed story focusing on booms! bangs! and gadgetry rather than the substance of the characters. The other issue some may have is that it ends with no resolution as to what happened to Von Doom or The Silver Surfer's all-powerful board (maybe he sent it out for a nice waxing).
Even so, this is a fun, quick watch. It has some hysterically comical moments (almost all of which are thanks to Chris Evans' plucky Human Torch).
Just don't expect much character and you might enjoy certain aspects.