Missing Something, but watchable

Rating: 5/10 (25 February 2006)

The Movie: 2 scientists, 2 pilots, and their financial backer hop in a space shuttle to go to an orbital space station to study a spacial storm that they believe is similar to the storm that hit Earth a millenia ago and sparked life on our planet. They miscalculate the direction and speed of said storm and are hit full on by it. Only the financial backer, Victor Von Doom, is behind any kind of advanced shielding. The co-pilot is out on a spacewalk, and the other 3 are just behind the outer wall. When the storm hits them, they make pretty comical poses in slow motion and appear to start floating(there was artificial gravity before the storm hit). So then we find our team back on Earth at some mountain medical resort. Although they never tell us, you can tell it's Vancouver. That's where our pilots(Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm), and our scientists(Sue Storm and Reed Richards) realize that their DNA has been "fundamentally changed". Since Grimm was on spacewalk, he had the most marked change. And unlike the other 3, he can't turn it off and on at will. The rest of the film is about them adjusting and manipulating their new powers and stopping the newly dubbed "Dr. Doom"(formerly Victor Von) from using his new powers(seems his shield didn't work so well after all) for the purposes of evil.
My take: I can't help but compare this to the Spiderman's, the X-Men, and Batman Begins, all of which were better movies with deeper characters. And it's funny to me that in a cast with such actors as Ioan Gruffud, Michael Chiklis, Jessica Alba, and Julian McMahon, that it's Chris Evans' electric portrayal of The Human Torch/Johnny Storm that saves this movie. That kid brings life and energy to every scene he's in, and his comic timing is fantastic(no pun intended). Gruffud was excellent as well, but his character was so understated that you might not have noticed. I don't blame Chiklis, a fine actor himself, for the cheesy lines he had to deliver, but my goodness couldn't they hire better writers? And believing Jessica Alba is a world class scientist is a bit of stretch. If she'd been able to deliver her lines a little less stiffly, maybe it would've been more believable. For FF2, I hope they bring in an entirely new writing team and give Alba and Chiklis lines they can handle with a lot less cheese. That being said, there were some fun scenes, almost all involving Torch/Johnny, whether he's needling Thing, or hitting on women, it's always fun to watch. And the bar scene with Thing and the blind girl was very good.
Special Effects: Excellent. They gave it top of the line effects throughout the movie.
The DVD: There is a commentary track with Alba, Gruffud, and Chiklis which was more entertaining than the movie itself. You can tell they're all friends and comfortable razzing each other. You find out such things as the fact Jessica didn't like having to dress up in the skin tight space suit, although Chiklis didn't think that opinion would be shared by male viewers. We find out that the actress that Johnny goes skiing with at the beginning of the movie is actually one of Chiklis's wife's best friends. We learn that Chiklis and McMahon have always wanted to be on each other's series on F/X, and were happy to finally be able to work together on this. We also learn that Evans ad-libbed a lot of the best dialogue...he had a scene where he was staring at Thing and said "Where's your ears?"...very funny and very ad-libbed. Same thing with the "That's gross" line when Mr. Fantastic unlocked the door at the beginning of the movie. The fact that the funniest lines were ad-libbed by a 24 year old actor is another topic entirely. Gruffud would've liked to try to ad-lib, but because he had to speak in an American accent, he didn't feel comfortable doing so. There's also some sort of video diary that Alba shot while they were traveling around and promoting the film. Some of it was insightful, but it was mostly stuff I could've done without.
FF2 is going to happen, so I hope they take a long look at the critiques of this initial installment and make some changes in the writing staff, and possibly the director. Could you imagine Tony Scott directing one of these movies???