Neither fantastic nor appalling

Rating: 6/10 (21 December 2005)

Tricky thing, adapting comic-books: you can get a masterpiece like Spider-Man 2 or Batman Begins, but also a load of rubbish like Batman & Robin. Fantastic Four, based on Marvel's oldest creation, falls somewhere in between: it lacks that special something that made Sam Raimi and Chris Nolan's work unmissable, but has enough good material to elevate it above the utter silliness of Joel Schumacher's Bat-flick.
Given the source comic is the most kid-friendly of the Marvel stable, director Tim Story wisely keeps the plot simple: five people doing research in space find themselves exposed to cosmic rays and almost die. Once back on Earth, they discover the radiations altered their DNA, giving them superhuman abilities: Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) can stretch any part of his body as if it were rubber; Susan Storm (Jessica Alba) can become invisible and generate force fields; her brother Johnny (Chris Evans) is able to turn himself into a living flame, hence his superhero name Human Torch; Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), Reed's best friend, has had his skin replaced with an exoskeleton made of rock, meaning he has superhuman strength and is substantially invulnerable. Unfortunately, he is also the only one of the four who can't "turn off" his power, a discovery that makes him very angry and resentful. This prompts Reed to look for a cure with Susan's help, whereas Johnny just wants to have fun. Soon enough, though, they will have to join forces against the fifth member of the space trip, Victor von Doom (Julian McMahon), whose lust for absolute power is making him do increasingly monstrous things.
Well, not so monstrous, perhaps: the PG-rating keeps the violence on a very harmless level, making the movie very similar to the comics in terms of tone, although that doesn't mean the action looks less spectacular than usual. What is less accomplished than usual, on the other hand, is the writing and character development: that the movie spends a lot of time explaining things is expected, almost acceptable actually, as this will make the possible sequel free to plunge straight into the action; even so, however, the writers must think most viewers have a flawed attention span, as they have Reed or Susan repeat the same thing ("The space storm radically altered the structure of our DNA..." and related gibberish) at least five times in a fifteen-minute time-frame.
Another problem is the leading roles: Gruffudd and Alba do their best, but even that isn't much when their characters are given few relevant things to do or say and the relationship between them is essentially based on embarrassed looks and cheesy dialogue. The whole thing is made more surprising by the fact that one of the film's writers is Mark Frost, who managed to craft intelligent story lines on Twin Peaks but seems incapable of handling a simple romance in this case.
The last significant defect is the villain: a respectable presence on paper, Dr. Doom is robbed of any charm on screen, partly because the script makes him little more than a Green Goblin clone (case in point: the scene where he offs several business partners is taken almost shot for shot from the first Spider-Man), partly because McMahon ends up playing him that way, failing to give the character that original mix of suaveness and amorality he effortlessly masters on Nip/Tuck.
Thankfully, the two people comic-readers love the most happen to be the best thing in the movie as well: the Thing doesn't only look very realistic (the reason being a suit was used instead of CGI), he's also got a solid story arc, ably supported by Chiklis, one of the American small screen's recent revelations (The Shield), while Evans nails the Torch's wisecracking, energetic personality with an ease that is missing in Gruffudd and Alba's performances. Whenever those two are on screen, pulling pranks on each other or delivering their instantly recognizable catchphrases (Ben Grimm's "It's clobberin' time!" being particularly delightful to hear), the picture gets back on track, albeit only for a few minutes.
Overall, not incredibly bad but not that memorable either. Here's hoping the next installment will have more speaking in its favor.