Plays it Safe, Becomes Lackluster

Rating: 6/10 (18 May 2011)

Fantastic Four was certainly not the best, but neither was it the worst comic book adaptation. I was mostly underwhelmed by it. I'll sit through it, but I won't go out of my way to see it. I ended up with a lackluster "meh" feeling.
It came out when comic books were just getting started and didn't do anything to stand out from the crowd. It came out after Spider-Man, X-Men, Blade, Hulk, Daredevil, and Punisher, all of which were origins. Rather than do anything different, it just followed the established and already well-worn origin format. It was practically following the same exact beats and scenes as Spider-Man and Hulk. There was nothing about it to stand out from the crowd.
As said, the casting is hit and miss. Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans are terrific, almost perfectly cast. They are exactly as I imagine when I read the comics. If they did a reboot, I would greatly appreciate if those two returned. Ioan Gruffudd is mostly uninteresting. He doesn't do anything interesting. He does have Reed's bumbling social awkwardness, but not the intelligence. Jessica Alba was terrible casting, merely there for a "big" name in the credits. I assume that when people said "big name" the producers heard "bra size." She is absolutely nothing like the comic version. And they just threw in scenes to show off her body without much reason, like the bridge rescue.
And they completely missed what makes Doctor Doom so great. He's one of comic book's greatest villains. Here, he's nothing. First, they made the mistake of going with his Ultimate version rather than the far more interesting main universe. Then, he does nothing for most of the movie except hate everyone else. Julian McMahon tries hard, but he isn't given much to work with.
The special effects were good. Mister Fantastic and Human Torch looked cool. Though it isn't too hard to make a woman invisible. I absolutely loved that they did Thing in practical make up since it looks so much more realistic than anything they could do digitally. And it wasn't just some crappy TMNT-copycat.
Considering that there are four superheroes, there's surprisingly little action. There's the space station disaster, the rescue on the bridge, and the end battle. It's mostly technical jargon from people reading a script, with none giving the impression they know what it means. And the action just doesn't give the time necessary to build up anticipation and make people care about what's going on. It's okay for what it is, but too many other movies have done it better.
It's an okay, middle of the road movie, neither terrible nor terrific. It played it safe to make money for the studio and didn't excite anyone. I did think that the second movie improved on a lot of aspects. But I am no where near sad that they decided not to make a third in this series.