Fantastic Four, Mediocre Everything Else

Rating: 7/10 (11 July 2005)

Okay, I knew going into this movie that it wouldn't be Spider-Man, X-Men, or Batman quality, but I hoped it would be good. Not that it was awful, but it sure wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. It's not even the plot's fault, though others would say so. The plot is exactly what I was predicting and what I wanted. 4 people get superpowers, and fight another guy with superpowers. What's wrong with that? No, the problem here lies in 2 things. One is minor, the other very important. The minor one is dialogue. A lot of the dialogue is pretty good, but there are a fair share of one-liners that didn't deserve to see the light of day. The other problem, and this is a big one, is casting. Don't get me wrong, I loved the actual Fantastic Four. Johnny, Ben, Sue, and Reed were all really well done, and I didn't really think they would be, so I was impressed. However, Dr. Doom needs some tweaking. It's not even the actor's fault, in my opinion. He's just not menacing enough to be a supervillain. Towards the end of the movie, when Doom is in the Doom suit, he looks very menacing, as he well should. But with lines like, "You're fired!" and that awful voice, you just wish he was never on the screen at all, and what kind of a movie would that have been? Anyway, the FF are fun to watch, and it is a very watchable movie. However, it does suffer from EXTREMELY poor casting on one of the most important character. 'Nuff said...