I Wish I Liked... Or Hated... This Movie More

Rating: 5/10 (23 July 2005)

FANTASTIC FOUR (2+ outta 5 stars) I suppose this movie isn't as terrible as it looks on the surface (and believe me, to anyone familiar with the comic book in its heyday, it does *look* terrible) but it's nowhere near as good a movie as it could been. The main problem is that they have a villain, Doctor Doom, but he doesn't have much motivation... and he doesn't even have any kind of evil plan to take over the world or anything. So he becomes the archvillain of the Fantastic Four because... he's kind of a jerk? He's not threatening to blow up the city? Or planning to murder thousands of innocent people? There is some kind of half-baked subplot where he and Reed Richards are both seeking the affections of Sue Storm but there is no real tension there... it's not even believable for a second that Sue could ever have been serious about a vain jackass like Doom... and Doom hardly seems capable of the kind of passion that could make this kind of romantic tug-of-war interesting. Yeah, these three characters are all wash-outs compared to the comic book versions. Fortunately, Mike Chiklis as The Thing and Chris Evans as The Human Torch are pretty faithful to the comic book characters and they have some good on screen chemistry. The Thing's dilemma (he is the only one of the four who takes the form of a "monster" and can't turn his power off and on at will) is handled very well... I wish we could have seen even more of his developing relationship with blind girl Alicia. Johnny Storm is a loudmouth, risk-taking fame-seeker and, since everyone else is so deadly-serious all the time, he gets all the best lines. The movie has a few moments... but the story has no real momentum and the big finale is about as senseless a movie fight as you will ever see. And what's with four heroes ganging up on one lousy villain? I thought the Jedis were wimps because they are always ganging up on the bad guys two-on-one... now we have FOUR against one? They just so much less heroic doing that...