For the love of basketball see something else!

Rating: 1/10 (10 July 2005)

Basic necessities in adapting any story like the F4 to the screen would be writers, directors, actors, an effects team and a healthy budget. With a cost hovering around $100 million dollars, Fantastic Four has only the budget of a successful adaptation. Enron stock would have been a better investment. With no sense of pacing, lame attempts at humor, bad effects, poor dialog, hackwork photography and some truly terrible acting F4 is a strong candidate for worst film of the year in any year, except perhaps 2000, the year of Battlefield Earth.
What's wrong with this film could be related in real time by simply describing what is on the screen at any given moment. The single moment of joy in the entire ordeal was a cameo by Stan Lee. His face time was not anything spectacular but it reminded me, however briefly, of other Marvel adaptations that I 'd seen, each superior to this one. But soon it was back to Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic. His performance alone would be enough to pan the film. It's so terrible it should be called something other than acting. Frankly given how terrible all the cast (except the extras, all of whom do competent extra work) do at "acting" it's surprising he can stick out.
123 minutes of a shiny thing without a soul would be the most appropriate title for this debacle. After last year's Taxi, perhaps it was unreasonable to expect Tim Story to put a remotely competent film on screen. True to that there is no craft here, not even a polished sheen to gloss over the omnipresent flaws. Any film with a Human Torch or a fellow made out of rocks requires the suspension of disbelief, Fantastic Four requires the suspension of taste.