One of the bad movies I actually like

Rating: 5/10 (25 October 2010)

Hollywood has taken the classic comic book The Fantastic Four and made a great movie out of it. It's called The Incredibles. This official, big screen adaptation of the comic falls far, far short of being great. In fact, it's pretty crappy in most respects. As bad as it is, though, I still like its lighthearted tone and the few things about the FF that it gets almost precisely right.
Born in the Cold War days of the space race, the Fantastic Four comic was about a brilliant scientist named Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffud), his best friend and pilot Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), the woman Reed loves, and her kid brother Johnny (Chris Evans). The four of them defy government orders and sneak aboard a rocket ship to launch it into space, where they're bombarded by cosmic rays and are transformed into the stretchable Mr. Fantastic, super-strong and rock-like Thing and the more obviously descriptive Invisible Girl and Human Torch. The foursome band together to argue like cats and dogs while using their powers to protect humanity, most notably from the evil schemes of an Eastern European tyrant, scientist and sorcerer named Doctor Doom (Julian McMahon).
To start with, this film butchers that origin about as badly as any super-hero origin has been butchered in movie history. Here, Reed is a financially strapped scientist who has to go to wealthy industrialist Victor Von Doom and ask for his help in conducting a science experiment involving an approaching cosmic storm. Sue and her brother Johnny work for Von Doom, with Sue even dating the guy while Reed, who was cold and forceful in the comics, is reduced to an insecure and socially awkward misfit who broke up with Sue years ago.
They fly up to Von Doom's space station, get zapped by the cosmic storm and change into their super-powered forms, with Von Doom being included this time as a metalized version of the old Spider-Man villain Electro. Back on Earth, the Fantastic Four become a media sensation while Reed tries to work on curing their conditions. Reed and Sue grow closer as Von Doom is caught up in a stupid subplot involving the loss of his company. Eventually, Von Doom dons his traditional hood and metal face-plate and tries to destroy Reed and company. They fight. The end.
I believe the background of this movie is that it was first intended to be a comedy, something like a super-hero version of The Addams Family or The Munsters, and some studio executives then demanded it be refashioned into a more stereotypical comic book adventure flick. If that isn't true, it should have been because that's what Fantastic Four is like. There's a whole lot of humor and fun with a few badly designed and badly pulled off action sequences sandwiched in at the beginning and end.
Let's start with the good.
Johnny Storm is may be the best ever big screen version of a comic book character. The rambunctious 60s teen who could burst into flames is recast as 20something hothead who's never met a risk he didn't want to take or a woman he didn't want to kiss. This irresponsible guy learning to be responsible is actually a big part of both this movie and its sequel.
The tempestuous relationship between Johnny and Ben is also wonderfully captured here. The familial animosity between the two of them flows naturally and is the source of a lot of the movie's best laughs.
The story also does a nice job of illustrating the pitiful plight of Ben. The idea of being remade into horrible monster was much more of a compelling concept for a super-hero a half century ago. In a world that's much more used to the grotesque, it doesn't quite sting as much. But the film finds little ways of emphasizing Ben's suffering that are almost touching.
Fantastic Four also works hard at trying to be as much fun as possible, which is a nice break from so many other super-hero movie that treat everything so SERIOUSLY. There's something childlike and marvelously silly about the idea of people with costumes, code names and super-powers punching the forces of evil in the nose, and most super-hero movies move Heaven and Earth to squelch that sentiment. Where those films try so hard to be dramatic, this one goes for comedic and it's a nice chance of pace.
Now for the bad.
Reed Richards is a shlub, Sue Storm is a cypher and this movie aesthetically sodomizes Dr. Doom. He's turned into an utterly different and vastly inferior character. I can sort of understand why they thought they needed to change him. Countless sci-fi and fantasy storytellers have ripped off Dr. Doom to create their own bad guys and it might have been thought that the genuine article would have come off as derivative of his own copies. But if they didn't think Doom would work, they didn't need to jam him into this film. They could have used the Mole Man, Blastarr, the Skrulls or several other FF villains to do whatever evil-doing needed to be done.
Fantastic Four really isn't a good movie, but it demonstrates yet again that being good and being entertaining are not the same thing. For all its faults, and they are legion, I still had a great time watching it.