not as bad as some have said

Rating: 6/10 (31 July 2006)

Four so-called "scientists" take a trip into outer space to study a cosmic storm passing very close to planet earth. Unfortunately, due to a freak accident, they are exposed to a dangerously high dose of radiation that plays havoc with their DNA. Once back on earth, they discover that they have each acquired some strange "super power" which allows them to do "fantastic" things. Reed, the leader of the mission and a first class "commitment-phobe," turns into some sort of rubber man, whose limbs can stretch to astronomical lengths; Sue, his ex-girlfriend, becomes the "invisible woman," able to appear and disappear at will; her brother, Johnny, a frat-boy practical jokester, suddenly becomes a human fireball capable of flying all over the city (he thinks that's really "cool"); and Ben, Reed's practical assistant, gets the worst of the deal, turning into a Hulk-type creature who faces a life of loneliness and rejection because of his looks. The villain of the piece is a power-hungry CEO, who is also caught in the radioactive cloud and who is slowly but surely morphing into a literal "man of steel" bent on - what else? - using his new found power to rule the world.
"The Fantastic Four," based on the Marvel Comic of the same name, is a hokey, harmless little time-waster that may appeal to superhero devotees with lax standards when it comes to movies based on such works. The real problem with the film is that the heroes spend more time talking about their powers than doing anything very interesting with them. There's a fairly nifty little fight scene at the end, but it takes way too long to get there for it to be really worth the trip. On the other hand, there's a breezy quality to some of the writing, particularly in the put-down exchanges between Ben and Johnny, which helps to compensate for the rather sappy conversations between the former lovers, Reed and Sue. And the special effects are very good for the most part.
All in all, this is a minor addition to the over-saturated superhero genre, but it's also not quite the unmitigated disaster many critics claimed it was.