What a shame...

Rating: 1/10 (8 January 2014)

It's been many years since I have seen this movie so I found myself watching it again just to see how I felt about it now that I am a little older.
The heroes seem to do things which make no sense in their reality and complete sense in the reality of the writers. If I know the writer was working for a specific effect or purpose in a scene it's like seeing the strings on a puppet - it loses you and you find yourself out of the story and thinking about the writer/story teller.
There is an incident in public which requires the team's action. A huge crowd has gathered and is blocking the team from getting there. Reed tells Sue to turn invisible, take her clothes off and get to the front of the crowd. She does so and slips in and out of invisibility unintentionally, with people watching mind you, and she is embarrassed when people in public see her in her underwear. Eventually, her powers work properly and she starts pushing her way through the crowd. When she gets to the front of the crowd the rest of the team is there.
Now think about this: how does this make any sense in their reality? The situation is the team is faced with an immovable obstacle and somehow the solution is to have Sue become invisible? Replace the crowd of people with a brick wall or a door. Does invisibility help get through? In the end she has to shove and push her way through so why did she need to strip naked and turn invisible? Of course, it was because Sue is played by Jessica Alba and the writers wanted a scene where their sexy lead female actress titillates the male demographic and provides a humorous scene at the same time. I knew it and I am willing to bet many others knew it instantly, too. The motivations of the writers was so transparent (no pun intended) that it took me out of the movie and I sighed in embarrassment, just like Sue.
Most of the actors were terrible in their roles. Particularly bad were Jessica Alba and the guy who plays Dr. Doom (I don't care enough about him to look up his name). Jessica Alba is beautiful and talented at modeling but she's not believable as a genius scientist. She was put there to appeal to teenage boys. What will Hollywood do next? Cast John Cusack as Richard Nixon? hahahaha-- oh....
I will say Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans played their roles very well and were the only real likable characters to be seen here. There was some bad dialogue but that's more the writers' fault than theirs.
Filling out the cast are some very cheesy actors in supporting cookie-cutter roles like the evil corporate board members. Or the cops and rabid fans who love the Fantastic Four immediately and give them the reception not seen since the parade given to Buzz and Neil Armstrong after returning from the moon landing.
Nothing really happened besides the team getting their powers and arguing. They spend the whole movie bickering and only really work as a team once and even then it's kind of small potatoes.
Jessica Alba strips naked again. That makes it twice in this movie.
There is inconsistent logic all over. When the team is seen in public for the first time they are instantly popular - like Beatles popular and they hadn't done anything huge like save the world. Yet when Doom's transformation is evaluated by a medical doctor, the doctor insists on contacting the CDC to make sure his powers aren't contagious or deadly. Where was this concern upon the public seeing a giant rock man, a man who can ignite himself, a woman who can turn invisible or a stretchy dude? Aren't these just as potentially infectious? Why didn't any other person in the entire world show any concern about people with the powers of gods walking among them and why didn't the U.S. government immediately start asking the same kinds of questions the medical doctor asked?
Oh, Jessica Alba naked again and uses her invisibility to hide in another comical scene. Three times...
Hey, this movie is making me hungry. I feel like eating. Maybe I will have a Whopper from Burger King, or Lunchables washed down with some Dos Equis and Pepsi and play the Fantastic Four movie game on an Xbox I bought from Wal Mart.
Oh, back to the movie. I find it hard to believe these people are friends, let alone the first family of heroes. Despite decades of friendship and teamwork, the two best friends in the movie are put at odds faster than rival moms at a Black Friday Forever 21 sale.
Doom was changed from a villain with a complex moral code to a one dimensional unethical corporate CEO of a company which sells... something? He gets muscled out of his company despite the fact that the FF is insanely popular for some reason. The popularity of the team SHOULD translate to new investors on that alone... but that is never considered by the writers who want motivation for Doom to hate Reed.
We don't need another corporate CEO driven mad by his new powers and on the hunt for revenge. We already had that with Norman Osborn in Spider-Man and again in Doctor Octopus in Spider-Man 2 (replace CEO with scientist).
I'd watch through the end credits to see if there is a fourth scene of Sue accidentally being naked but I'm losing interest fast.