Disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (10 July 2005)

What a sad, sad waste of a fairly talented cast this is. I walked into the movie theater, expecting to see a movie with great special effects, a strong storyline and some interesting characters. Instead, I got slammed with 2 hours of jumbled nonsense. "Fantastic Four" is not "fantastic" as all the ad campaigns and media hype have made it seem.
You may be wondering: what made this movie so disappointing? A number of things, really. I wasn't thrilled at all when I heard that director Tim Story (Taxi, Barbershop) would be handling this project. I could pretty much tell by then: this movie is a flop. Story brings nothing interesting or valuable to the table as a director, in fact, many of his projects have come out with the flat, hollow tone of this one.
The story is as follows: a formerly wealthy scientist, Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and his business partner/bodyguard Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) approach ultra-rich old friend Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) about funding a project in space that would examine human DNA and possibly reveal the secrets of ending many diseases. (Reed's logic to this project is just as confusing as the rest of the film.) Von Doom agrees, and he, Richards and Grimm go up into space along with Von Doom's coworker/Richards' ex-girlfriend, Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) and Sue's hotheaded NASA-dropout brother, Johnny Storm (Chris Evans). The scientists are up in space when they are hit by an enormous space storm and are exposed to copious amounts of radiation. When they get back on Earth, after recovering from their injuries, they slowly realize that their DNA has been altered, giving them superpowers. Richards' limbs have become elastic/stretchy. Sue can turn invisible and fire force fields. Johnny has become a "human torch" who can light fire to himself and fly. And Ben, who was exposed to the most radiation, becomes "The Thing", a solid rocklike creature who was superstrength. They must use their powers to go up against Victor, who has turned into Dr. Doom, with steel skin and lightning coming out of his fingers and randomly kills people.
Major Problem 1: continuity issues. After the five scientists are hit by radiation, the ship blows up. How the heck do they get back down to Earth? You basically get a cut from them flying through the air to them down in Victor's medical center, and they're all fine. You can't exactly breath air in space, and even if you could, the fall down to earth would kill you, or you would float around in space forever. It just doesn't make sense. Also, why is Victor so intent on killing the Fantastic Four? Obviously, the failed mission is one of the reasons why his business plummeted, but it wasn't the Fantastic Four's fault. It was a freak of nature: the storm arrived 9 hours early.
Major Problem 2: social issues. This is a comic book movie. We want to see action. 90% of the movie was the "Fantastic" Four getting their social problems sorted out. Examples: the scene with Ben and his wife after Ben has become The Thing. At best, it's laughable. Director Tim obviously included this scene to add emotional depth to the movie, but all this scene does is give us another reason to knock another star off this movie's rating. The exchanges between Johnny and Sue about Johnny's behavior are poorly scripted and, frankly, are time wasters. Reed is trying to sort out his feelings for Sue, who never exactly "broke up" with Victor, and a lot of their scenes are awkward and unnecessary, too. The only slightly funny and interesting arguments in this movie are the exchanges between Ben and Johnny - they act like a pair of five-year-olds, bringing some laughs. At several points, I thought, "Yes, finally the action begins," but it never happened until the end. And even the end action scene wasn't all that long or impressive. What the director, script writers and editors didn't get was: we don't care about the Fantastic Four's social problems. This is a comic book movie, for crying out loud, and we want to see action...so give us action! In the movie business, the whole idea is "give people what they want." The trailers included basically all the action that you're going to see in the movie, so don't prepare yourself for a "Spiderman"-esque show.
Rating: ***** out of 10.