Watchable, but only barely.

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2006)

I wanted to like this movie. I did. Yes, I knew it was supposed to be fairly bad, but I still wanted to enjoy it. And really, you can't, because it's a terribly flawed movie.
The dialog is silly.
The special effects are good in small doses, especially for when the Human Torch is doing his thing. But when Mr. Fantastic starts stretching? Get ready for something horrendous. The Thing is clearly too short to really be the Thing (I don't care if Vic Mackey wanted no CGI or not), and the story really has a rough time trying to make us feel for him. His wife just gets up and leaves, no question? What the hell? And then they try to humanize him more with the blind black chick, only to have her on screen for a total of 5 minutes? Come on.
The acting is alright, and unfortunately the only person who could really do anything was Chris Evans, since he gets all the best dialog in the movie, and clearly is a great choice for Johnny Storm. Everyone else just gets stuff modest at best.
What really makes the movie all the worse however, is the fact that a lot of it is too comedic for its own good. Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies work because they have just the right dose of comedy, camp, action and realism. Fantastic 4 has far too much comedy, not enough action, next to no realism, and gets campy way too often. But that's what they get for getting the director of Barbershop to do this.
And oh Jesus, I haven't gotten to the best part: Jessica Alba in some of the worst casting in history. She is not Sue Storm. While there may be problems with the rest of the casting, this is just unspeakable. You can't help this choice at all. She's no scientist, and she barely works as anything else either, let alone as the Invisible Woman. It becomes obvious that she's only there for eye candy when she randomly strips during the bridge sequence to help move attention away from The Thing. For one, she's wearing a thong (I'll make a slight assumption here, but doing all that work in the lab all day really helps me figure scientists do not wear thongs), and she's Jessica Alba. She worked as a stripper in Frank Miller's Sin City, but there, she wasn't brainy, and wasn't a real amazing person there. She's supposed to be here...and isn't. Go back to your day job as the sex appeal honey.
But is it watchable? Yes, but only barely. The story is still there, and the whole hype of the media fascination with them is something that is only half explained in other comic book films (I want more of J. Jonah Jameson Raimi!), and is more touched on here. Plus, some of the things that really don't work, are given some time to try throughout the film. And come on, the cameo by Stan Lee is enough for people to see it. And it was definitely amusing to see both Ben Mulroney and Maria Menunos showing up.
A good polish of the script, less comedy, better casting, and nicer CGI would have made this a worthy contender for a good comic book movie. But unfortunately, has to sit it out and wait for the sequel in order to even potentially be thought of as "great".
5.5/10.