Fantastic FAILURE

Rating: 1/10 (8 July 2005)

Being a comic book fan, I truly wanted to give this movie a chance to be good. It failed...in several ways. The casting was bad, as only Chris Evans (Human Torch) and Michael Chiklis (The Thing) actually seemed the least bit believable as their characters. The poor acting, I tried hard to blame on the actors not knowing the characters well. But by the middle of the movie, it was obvious that the screenwriter was completely to blame. I saw this movie less than an hour ago, I can not for the life of me think of ONE good line of dialogue, ONE memorable scene, aside from Ben Grimm's famous "It's Clobberin' Time!" catch phrase. The writing is not just bad, it's VERY bad. So bad, that they even had to resort to using foul language just for shock value. I'm not saying "Oh, mercy, they cussed, that's bad." What I'm saying is the foul language used seemed to have just been thrown in, with no real thought on WHY the character would say such a word in that scene, yet use far more tame language in a scene you would think DESERVED foul language. The flow of the movie is lobsided, and has the most uneven flow of humor and drama I can recall ever seeing in a movie. Johnny/The Human Torch is about the only realistic character in this whole film. He behaves pretty much as one would expect an egotistical dude who now has superpowers would behave. Yet they even screw THAT up by making him suddenly mature and a team player, OUT OF THE BLUE. If they had put in just ONE 20-30 scene showing the ramifications of his behavior, that would have at least been SOMETHING for me to accept as the reason for his sudden behavior change. But, they didn't, so now they give me NOTHING I can compliment.
It makes attempts to portray what life would be like for these heroes, if they really existed. Which is fine. But it's like they touch on it briefly, and apparently the problem never seems to arise again! Like how the public might react if they saw one of them in regular clothes out in public. There's ONE 30 second scene of such an incident, then it seems like the public never even notices who they are in street clothes again!
But by far, the biggest complaint that I have, is the ENTIRE character of Victor Von Doom. Not one single aspect of that character in this movie was believable. And it's not Julian McMahon's fault one bit. He did a great job of trying to turn crap into gold in his performance. The writing, again, failed him, as it failed the entire movie.
For the love of sanity, and your hard earned money, see another movie instead of this one. You'll thank me, trust me.