Great dumb fun

Rating: 8/10 (21 July 2005)

Okay, this movie is not near as good as Batman Begins or Spider-man 2. But it's still WAY better than most of the flak you're going to get this summer.
Not all comic book movies need to have the depth of Spider-man 2 or the dark seriousness of Batman Begins or even the nobility of Superman. It's okay to take a comic book and give it a light-hearted approach. And if there's a mainstream comic-to-film project in which it's appropriate to take that approach, it would be, in my opinion, the Fantastic Four.
Yes, I would have loved to have seen what it would have been like if the director of "Traffic" had directed this instead of the director of "Barbershop," but what I must say in Tim Story's defense is that his lighthearted approach allows the audience to do something they couldn't do with Batman Begins: sit back, relax, don't think, and enjoy a fun, often funny, ride.
So is it as good as Batman Begins? No. But is it fair to compare the two to one another in the first place? Also no. Go see this film, you won't have to think, but you'll probably enjoy yourself, and isn't that what movies are generally for?