Sorry excuse for an action film and not much better as a comic book adaptation either.

Rating: 5/10 (2 January 2008)

Fantastic Four is a film that astounds and surprises but maybe not necessarily for the right reasons; it's a film that will have you laughing at it rather than with it for most of the time with its ludicrous situations and ideas that it so desperately wants you to believe; and yet it remains a solid if not unspectacular entry into the recent spate of comic book adaptations even if it does play out like a B-movie 90% of the time.
It seems ironic that the director is called Tim Story because he clearly doesn't have one to work with here since at its core, Fantastic Four is a film without one. In one half of this bi-linear film, you have Reed Richards (Gruffudd); Sue Storm (Alba); Johnny Storm (Evans) and Ben Grimm (Chiklis) all moping around trying to come to terms with their new powers and for Grimm, his new image. The other half consists of Victor von Doom (McMahon) getting a thirst for blood as he wipes out the board members that sacked him from his own company. It seems strange that Spider-Man from three years previous managed to show us Peter Parker's reaction to his new found powers in a fun and somewhat entertaining montage in about five minutes; here it takes up almost half the film. But there is plenty more wrong with Fantastic Four. If you can get over the fact that the 'bad guy' is called 'von Doom' and manage to refrain yourself from chuckling whenever his hilariously camp villain is on screen, you'll surely not be able to look past the way all the characters seem to whisper their lines for the first forty minutes; the way the film would then blast us with juvenile rock music whenever it felt like and the way Johnny Storm has the mental capacity of a sixteen year old yet is apparently smart enough to be an astronaut, despite not knowing what the temperature of the sun is.
Yes, Fantastic Four is a film that is on par with The Core in terms of not only scientific screw ups but terrible characterisation. I find it amazing that shortly after the space storm, or whatever it was, gives them the powers; they spend some time in quarantine and yet nobody there is able to register they have abnormal DNA inside them; nobody ever grabs one of the four and shakes them by the shoulders exclaiming: 'Shut up and listen; you're different' but the one thing that really takes the cake is the fact von Doom apparently doesn't even need to be in quarantine since we see him out and about whilst everyone else is at hospital. As a villain, von Doom is very weak with his victims being very obvious in obligatory scenes you just groan at: the doctor that wants to tell everyone; the board member in the car park and our heroes as a whole: his antagonism and sense of threat is either anti-climatic, needless or pointless.
As characters, our heroes that are the Fantastic Four are equally anti-climatic or needless. None of them are developed beyond any form of what they are at the very beginning bar Ben Grimm (aka The Thing). Grimm's fiancé it would seem, ditches Ben telling us she truly does go for what's on the outside and not inside. Grimm is also the strongest of the four and has the worst reaction to the accident: both physically and psychologically as he contemplates suicide on a bridge. He even finds time to tempt himself into falling in love again. It is here that I suggest the film should have been made with Grimm as the lone character. The film does not need Johnny Storm what-so-ever; it does not need Sue Storm either except for maybe getting some male teenage audiences in and the only reason for Richards' inclusion is so that someone has the level of intelligence to try and build a machine that'll reverse the effects but that is a sub-plot that is weak, underdeveloped and actually rather pointless. Take out Richards, give Grimm his intelligence and then you might have a good film.
But then we wouldn't be able to gush at Johnny's fire effect or the way he treats women like trash; we wouldn't be able to see him do his insane bike stunts to loud rock music. Johnny actually soaks up the media attention the film has within it but previous comic book efforts have society dislike their heroes at the beginning: Batman and Spider-Man are good examples with X-Men 2 using it as an entire narrative drive. Fantastic Four is a film that would have all its women in its universe blindingly attractive; I highly doubt girls as pretty as Jessica Alba would go on dates to an observatory with their boyfriends and that the nurse at the beginning would be as dumb and as attractive as she was, simultaneously. Fantastic Four is also a film that thrives on its product placement: one such tilt shot starts on 'ESPN' and then moves down to the action. Burger King's 'flamed to perfection' also cashes in  I guess a $100,000,000 budget wasn't enough for Mr. Story and co..
So with cartoon characters that are as badly written as cartoon characters in a three picture skit; a story that revolves around pretty much nothing for three quarters of the time and a film that is relatively action starved, the film is a failure. The only reprieve Fantastic Four might have is that its villain is defeated in its finale through good use of science rather than aggression but that is clutching at some extremely thin straws.