Flame Out

Rating: 5/10 (9 July 2005)

Greetings again from the darkness. As a kid, I was a huge fan of the Saturday morning cartoon series and was very saddened when it was taken off the air due to parental concerns over violent images. Humorous when one compares to the video games that so pre-occupy the days of today's kids. The appeal of the Fantastic Four was always the isolation and camaraderie of this team. Most super heroes were isolated by their superpowers, but these four could depend on each other and were much stronger as a team than individually.
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were co-writers on Spider-man, Hulk and many others. My feelings were always that they had something special with this group. Director Tim Story is handicapped with a pretty weak cast, although Julian McMahon ("Charmed", "Nip/Tuck") does a decent job as Victor Von Doom and Michael Chiklis ("The Shield" and a memorable "Seinfeld") is very good as Ben Grimm/The Thing. On the other hand, Jessica Alba and Ion Gruffodd (TV's "Hornblower" series) recite their lines as if threatened by electric shock if they blow one. Chris Evans seems to have fun with the most energetic role of Johnny Storm but there is just not enough for him to do.
Special Effects in this one are pretty decent, but the movie watches as if we are reading a comic book. I realize we are, but most of the comic-to-film projects have at least made an effort to provide a script that flows and has passable dialogue between characters. Fantastic Four makes no such attempts. This is a cartoon in every sense and that really causes it to pale in comparison to especially Spider-man, but even Hulk.