Fun comedy for very little kids, abysmal super hero movie

Rating: 2/10 (30 July 2005)

Imagine Mike Myers writing and directing a super hero movie and you get Fantastic Four. The jokes are constant in the first hour and fifteen minutes. There cannot possibly be any seriousness or drama because the movie is literally a comedy in the style of Airplane as far as joke frequency. Reed Richards and company head up into space for some sort of "cosmic genome save the world and it's great for mankind" junk that gets them into position for the cosmic storm that gives them their powers. They are in space for about five seconds (yes, almost literally) when the cosmic storm hits early. They are blasted and then are next seen back on earth in quarantine. They develop their powers soon afterwards. The Thing is trashed throughout the movie. Johnny Storm/Human Torch makes fun of him throughout but it's cute fun and they have a great little chemistry going with it. The problem is that it's constant, as is The Thing being s*****d on by a bird, breaking five or six glasses (that's not an exaggeration), etc. You see, he's a rocky guy and he'd have trouble fitting in and he'd break lots of stuff!! We get the joke right off of the bat but it continues for the entire movie so get used to it. The Thing costume is terrible as you can see the fleshy, skin like parts of the costume clearly around the neck of a guy who's supposed to be rock inside and out. The so called relationship with the blind lady that The Thing meets in a bar is about one minute in length with a wrap up at the end. Hey, that relationship could be serious so it's no go here. The only effective, moving moment is also the movie's best movie moment. The Thing's done some hero stuff on a bridge and a crowd has gathered to watch. The crowd cheers him when it's over and The Thing's wife conveniently is on the bridge and shows up in the crowd. While the crowd is cheering, she removes her wedding ring and drops it on the ground. Thus, The Thing's heart is broken while a crowd cheers him in the background. It's actually done well. There are one or two other decent movie moments and that is all. The only guy who has any life is Johnny Storm. He has way too much fun with the super hero powers and Reed Richards and Sue Storm don't have any. They hate their powers, Johnny loves his and The Thing bumbles around being made a clown of. The action is a complete ripoff, one of the biggest ripoffs in any movie I've ever seen. If you've seen the trailer, you've seen ALL of the action. The thing too is that the action was better done in the trailer then it was in this movie (for real.) The cool opera music accompanying the action in the trailer is not in the movie, plus I heard the same music in a preview before this movie so it's some kind of trailer music. For the first hour and fifteen minutes, other then the FF discovering their powers, NOTHING happens. While the FF goes about trying to make kids laugh, Victor Von Doom is S-L-O-W-L-Y changing into Doctor Doom. When he becomes Doom, he's a surprisingly good antagonist. The problem is he's in a comedy and the FF are a joke so he's in the wrong movie if he wants to make an impact. He becomes Doom completely with about ten minutes to go in the movie and there follows an incredibly short final battle which is really the only battle in the entire movie. There is some good super hero stuff here for about three minutes and it keeps this movie from getting a 1 in my rating. There is some good team stuff here from the FF, which is interesting because they have never practiced anything or trained in any capacity as a group. They just sort of show up in their cute uniforms and do stuff. They are wearing uniforms for absolutely no reason as they are not even really super heros until the final battle and are a pretty disjointed unit throughout. Only Johnny tries to make them a team and that is for popularity and marketing purposes as he loves this stuff. Reed, of course, wears his uniform indoors for most of the movie, making him look like a total chump. Jessica Alba fakes her way through it and is, of course, absolutely gorgeous. She's so pretty you don't even really care if she can act or not. You just get lost in those eyes. The script is absolutely terrible, the dialogue is empty, the performances one dimensional. Julian McMahon (if he's the next Bond, he sure looks it) is a good Doom but he's too good for this jokefest. Mike Myers would have been more fitting. The dude who plays the Torch has great potential in his role and he is good in the serious parts, all two seconds of it. The FF deserve better. To be honest, they actually deserve a MOVIE about them.