Focus Group Pap

Rating: 3/10 (24 July 2005)

This is why you should never use focus groups, you can smell them throughout the film. What we have here is a lowest common denominator film piled high with product marketing and light on any thing to go wow or care about. For some reason I also got a feeling the movie got a fair amount of slicing in editing as well. For example near the beginning storm goes invisible in order to get past the police barriers only it doesn't show her doing this and does explain how Reed get's past them. Add to that the whole mess is caused by the fantastic four in the first place, yet the get treated like heroes.
All the way through the film the squabble amongst themselves like teenagers, including the 'baddie' Von doom who appeared to be no more self centered and evil than the main fantastic four. In short for super heroes that are supposed to fight for good and be super smart they came across as a bunch of high school drop outs.
If you think about it for a second and ask - why would anyone love these characters - apart from their tight fitting costumes, and even that is a taste thing - then there's little reason to. They didn't save anyone really, caused a lot of damage, wrecked other peoples property and generally where a pain in the arse.
Spider man, Batman (not 'and robin) and the X men all have something more going on - this I started to really not like the main characters early on, and their self obsession just made it worse as it went along.
Lastly what exactly did Von Doom have against them? Was it all down to his love of Sue Storm? If so that didn't really come across and he tried to kill her first chance he got.
This is supposed to be fantasy but it would help to have some kind of reason why everything was happening. This comes across with as much emotional depth as a gap commercial.