Very disappointing.

Rating: 4/10 (8 May 2006)

FF was slow, clichéd, and dull. The special effects were fine, but you had to wait until the final fight scene to see them. The first 80 minutes were all very typical, very obvious, and very boring character development. All of the "emotional" moments were telegraphed from a mile away, and used dialog repeated a thousand times in other films. There was absolutely no deviation from the standard action-movie formula, this movie was as boring as Elektra. I did not go and see FF expecting "Gone with the Wind", but nor did I go to see the incredibly lame and dumbed-down script. I urge you to click on the "Memorable Quotes" link in IMDb for this movie, and you will see that none of them are at all memorable. Most are groaners. This movie was one giant cliché from start to finish.
As superhero movies go, it had no originality. The bridge scene was well done, but completely ridiculous at the same time. At one point they convince Jessica Alba to take off her clothes (no nudity) and turn herself invisible because they can't get past the police line on the bridge. She does so, with the obvious moment when she flashes back to visibility in her underwear, but then moments later, all 4 of the FF are standing on the part of the bridge they couldn't' get to earlier, along with a huge crowd including Ben Grimm's ex-fiancé. It was terribly obvious that the Alba scene was added just to titillate Alba fans as it had nothing to do with the plot (and was not that titillating either). There really were only 2 actions sequences in the entire film; the bridge scene and the final fight. Both were well done (in terms of graphics) but the rest of the movie was a boring mishmash of dull dialog and Soap-opera plot development.
One further note. I urge you to sort these comments in IMDb by "Loved It" and just have a look at the comments from people who rated it a 10. Almost all of them have only ever rated one movie, and they use language telling you how well the director developed the characters, how well the script worked, that it was the best summer movie of 2005, etc. It is so incredibly obvious that all of these comments are plants by the studio to boost the IMDb ratings. Is nothing sacred any longer? One "person" who actually did rate more than one movie conveniently gave 10's to all of 20th Century Fox's offerings in 2005 (FF, Elektra), and very poor ratings to every one of their competitors (War of the Worlds, Sin City, both of which were far better than this incredibly formulaic film).
4/10