Four On The Floor

Rating: 2/10 (13 June 2007)

After making movies for their other comic book titles like Spiderman, The X-Men, the Hulk, Daredevil, among others, Marvel Comics goes about and makes a film about the characters that started it all for the Marvel Universe, The Fantastic Four. Yes Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm , and Ben Grimm are brought to life in a feature film that will give them the respect and studio money that the marvel title that was billed "The World's Greatest Comic Book Magazine" deserves. Well it was planned that way anyway.
But something happened along the way that is quite apparent that the new Fantastic Four film didn't quite meet expectations. The story is about four people, Reed,Sue,Johnny and Ben going in a private rocket ship ,funded by Reed's own money, to reach the moon. The ship doesn't reach its' destination and goes through a massive storm of cosmic rays that transform Reed, Sue,Johnny, and Ben into people with fantastic powers. This does not happen in the film however:
The space flight is done for different reasons. The flight is funded by the very successful Victor Von Doom , who in the picture, is the finance of Sue. Von Doom goes with the four on the fateful flight and receives a dose of cosmic rays as well. A tremendous change from the origin of the greatest villain in the Marvel Universe that one sees in the comics.
The four find out about their powers in a very different fashion than they did in the comics. Quite naturally, their portrayals don't even come close to bringing out the Fantastic Four and fleshing them out as deep well rounded characters.
Ioan Gruffred looks lost as Mister Fantastic. Reed in the comics was a highly successful confident man(Tim Robbins would have been great as Reed). Gruffred ,no matter how one looks at it, isn't Reed Richards.His chemistry with everyone in the movie is readily not apparent.
I know many studio executives may have thought that making Jessica Alba as Sue Storm would bring in a lot of publicity for the film and it may have. But to say a studio can't find a blond white woman to play Sue (Say Naomi Watts) is incredible. I am not a hater or anything but Sue in the comics wasn't Hispanic like Alba is. Alba and her acting skills left a lot to be desired too. Having Jessica Alba playing a scientist is a bit of a stretch that not even Reed Richards with his powers could reach.
Johnny Storm in the comics was a teenager so it is hard to believe Chris Evans was to play Sue's younger brother. Huh? Evans and Alba don't even look like brother and sister(The danger of the stunt casting just mentioned above.) and Evans looks older than Alba. He does do a decent job playing a hard edged Johnny Storm. He seems to be the only member of the four who enjoys his new found powers.
That can't be said for Ben, who now has become a large body of orange rock thanks to the accident. Michael Chilkis does a fine job playing the unfortunate Thing. But he like Alba seem to have no great chemistry with Gruffred. Alba and Gruffred have absolutely no chemistry with each other at all. Gruffred is old enough to be Alba's older brother but not really suited to be her love interest.
Why they had to make the blind Alicia Masters into a black woman (Kerry Washington) for the movie is not easily understandable. Her comment about not being accepted by society when she meets Ben in the bar late in the film is smacks of political correctness not real human frustration.
Julian McMahon makes for a serviceable Doctor Doom. But changing his story, changing how he met Reed and how he became Dr. Doom hurt the film the most. The Reed/Doom rivalry of great masterminds, one for good one for evil, is totally lost in the shuffle. As with everything else Gruffred seems to have no chemistry in his dealings with McMahon. The Richards/Von Doom rivalry is ruined even more.
There is not enough action in Fantastic Four to make it an exciting movie. At the very best it is just serviceable. The final showdown between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom is one quick let down. The showdown is over and done with before you know it.
Director Tim Story(Barbershop) seems as if he didn't really put his best foot forward into this movie.The acting, at times, is stilted and awkward. Marvel Comics could have found a better producer for this film than Story.
Whereas Marvel hit two home runs with Spiderman and the X-Men, with the Fantastic Four, Marvel gets a single but gets thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. As with the creators of The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle not having Jay Ward around to help that movie out,the creators of this Fantastic Four movie didn't have the mentoring of its' real creator, the late Jack Kirby. Stan Lee may have had his little cameo in the film. But the spirit, the flair, and the imagination of Jack Kirby was truly missing with this film. It only goes to show how much studio executives and their focus groups do to ruin feature films through their lack of imagination, their lack of experience in film making, and their own greed.
The Fantastic Four is one of those types of films. We all thought that with this film, we could forget the small budget Roger Corman FF film of 1994. But it seems like we shall have to wait somewhere in the future for giving The Fantstic Four the type of film they and their fans and movie fans everywhere really deserve.