Who in their right minds would give this pile of $#!@ a 10???

Rating: 2/10 (14 July 2005)

I just saw this movie, and I am extremely disappointed. It's another one in a long list of bad decisions regarding comic book movies, the worst of which have not yet been released (X-Men 3, anyone?). What a misfire! And to think that according to the trivia page, Steven Soderbergh was interested in directing, George Clooney was considered for the role of Reed Richards, Naomi Watts for Sue Storm, and Tim Robbins for Dr. Doom. Instead, we get Tim Story, who is one of the worst directors working today, and a cast comprised of B-list actors or television stars. This was the most unattractive cast I've seen since The Dreamcatcher. In particular, I couldn't stand Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd). There was absolutely nothing in this film to hold my interest. Where is the plot? The script had the structure of a sit-com. A bunch of semi-amusing occurrences, pasted together with no real development, conflict, character arcs, etc. The effects ranged from bad to mediocre. There was even one shot where you could see the wrinkles of the latex in The Thing's suit, right after Deb rushes off to the street wearing nothing but a skimpy night-gown (!). Even Dr. Doom, which has a great costume design in the comics, managed to look terrible thanks to a corny face-shaped iron mask (instead of the menacing, expressionistic, angular, metal-plate mask of the comics) and a golden shirt which looked like it came from the dressing room of a really cheap children show. The score was also annoying, and reminded me of TV shows like Sweet Valley High or The Flinstones, where whenever somebody slipped there was this "Wee-wee-wee-wee" sound effect to emphasize the comedy. Whenever there was a situation in Fantastic Four that was supposed to make us laugh, the score became unbearably goofy. The look of the movie was awful. Reed's machines looked like tinker-toys, and the whole thing had this plasticized, fake feeling to it. Nothing looked real, yet the style wasn't defined enough to be campy or cartoony. The characters lacked depth, and the only one who managed to bring something other than the obvious traits to their character (i.e. Doom=evil & megalomaniac, Torch=cocky & reckless, etc.) was Michael Chiklis, whose performance I enjoyed. What we end up with is a clichéd, paper thin, hollow product , which walks, talks and smells like a pilot for a TV series, the kind that gets canceled after one season.