Sacul gets Doomed by the Fantastic Four.

Rating: 5/10 (6 July 2005)

Sacul's meaningless movie reviews. Today: Sacul gets Doomed by the Fantastic Four.
The comic book geek in me wanted this movie to crawl out of the dark pit most people suspected it would be and come out clobbering.I'm sorry to report it only crawled in circles like a reanimated corpse trying to remember what it was that it was suppose to be doing.
On the sliding scale of comic books to film it doesn't fall into Catwoman's litter box but it sure doesn't kick your teeth in like Batman Begins or Spider-man 2 either. This film is pure middle ground and it never tries to excel for anything higher which is a sad way to treat Marvels first family.
There is a lesson to be learned with this movie and the lesson is simple, if you plan to give over the director's chair to a non-action/effects type director at least give it to someone who might do something interesting and possibly original with it. If you look at the comic book films that have been successful they are all helmed by directors of vision, people who not only wanted to bring the book to life but bring their style to it. What you don't do is give a potentially huge franchise to directors so far out of their element.
Having said that I'll climb off my comic book geek soap box and talk about the movie itself.
The movie begins by tripping over its own feet. Reed and Ben are groveling at Victor Von Dooms feet looking for funding, this scene holds zero resonance since you can't understand the rivalry that pre-exists with these two mental giants and how much crow Reed is chewing in the asking. Then it clumsily proceeds to spill the information after the fact to bring us up to speed. The main focus of these two men's fight for attention becomes an imagined love triangle with Sue Storm, not lust for superiority or I.Q envy.
The drive of the film is split into too many directions and none of them are great storytelling. Reed is obsessed with curing the team, Johnny is chasing glory, Benn is depressed, and Sue is busy trying to find more outfits to show off her cleavage. Meanwhile Victor is losing his company and turning into a hood ornament in a complete rip off of Norman Osborne's story from the first Spider-man. Not one of these stories pays off so they throw in a few miscellaneous action scenes to keep you interested, so when the battle with Dr Doom begins it's pretty dull and without much direction. Doom's threat doesn't carry any weight and when it's all said and done he doesn't seem to have had anything to gain from it in the first place.
The movie does have its strong points though. The interaction between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm are great fun. Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis are the Human Torch and The Thing and they seem to have fun with the roles once they get it down. Everyone else does their best with what they have but the movie already had one huge monkey on its back with The Incredibles having only recently shown us how good a super hero family movie could be. That's a tough film to outshine no matter how you stretch it.
The bottom line for fans of the Fantastic Four is that this does not feel like it should, they spend too much time bickering while the movie completely stalls out. For people who don't know the book the special effects and random action scenes might hold your interest long enough to enjoy the movie.
Sacul out Excelsior!