Light

Rating: 7/10 (14 July 2005)

"Fantastic Four" felt like it lacked a bit, but it was still a good movie. Many people are saying it's total crap, which I don't agree with. I liked it well enough.
This movie felt lighter and fluffier than most of the superhero movies that have come out within the last few years. It was sort of like a beginner's superhero flick; it's about the right weight for a child. (That "can he stretch any part of his body" thing is a different story.) It had less brooding darkness and doom and more humor. People fond of "Batman Begins," etc. may not be so fond of that, but I found it charming.
It's well-acted, in my opinion, and the effects are fairly good. The writing feels unoriginal, and the jokes, while not cliché, seem kind of obvious, but not cheesy per se. The biggest problem was the final showdown, which likely took all of two minutes and was quite the anticlimax. It's no more than a mild scruff, and we needed to see the characters do MORE than they did. They deserve it - the whole movie's been building up to getting to see them whoop some butt big time!
Pretty much the two characters they screwed up are Johnny Storm, aka The Human Torch, and Dr. Doom. Johnny is really one-dimensional and annoyingly scripted up until the very end, when he becomes dully two-dimensional and only sort of annoyingly scripted. But they completely wasted Dr. Doom. First, it took the whole dang movie to make him go from Victor Von Doom to Dr. Doom (he should have put on that mask an hour earlier), and then he's finished in that little blip of a final battle. I have never read the comics, but from what I hear he's one of the baddest of the baddies. You wouldn't know that from the film. However, this isn't entirely a bad thing for those Julian McMahon lovers, except it means all the more drool they're gonna get all over themselves.
Still, despite its downsides, I can't completely slam "Fantastic Four" without feeling like a wretch. To be honest, I find it sort of cute in its lightness. Not to mention it has a fair amount of eye candy. :)