Entertaining, if not outstanding

Rating: 7/10 (5 December 2005)

FANTASTIC FOUR is a mildly entertaining version of the famous comics by Marvel. This movie deals basically with how the FANTASTIC FOUR became the super heroes they are, so a great deal of time is spent in the set up of the characters. We find out that Reed Richards is trying to convince old high school buddy turned big shot impresario Victor Von Doom about a space program. Reed's former flame, Susan Storm, now works with Von Doom AND is dating him. The setting up of Doom as the FANTASTIC FOUR's arch nemesis is a bit non convincing; there is nothing particularly menacing about him and his so called "revenge" motives are (at least to me) stupidly unfounded. Needless to say, the space mission with Reed, Susan, Johnny Storm, Ben(Reed's partner)and Von Doom turns out very wrong and upon arrival to earth, everyone's genetic structure is changed. Johnny Storm, Susan's kid brother, is believable enough as the cocky "human torch". Ben is forever physically altered, Richards' becomes an elastic being and Susan can become invisible and create force fields at the cost of great physical stress. Victor Von Doom's alteration is somewhat confusing; we never really know what ARE his genetically altered powers. Von Doom holds an intense grudge against Richards for making the mission a failure, stealing his girl and for his financial crumbling but ever since the movie started it seems that Von Doom was only waiting for something like this to happen only to be truly mad at Reed Richards. The rest of the movie moves along at a nice pace but there's nothing gripping about it. SPIDER MAN 2 has way more drama and X-MEN looks even more "adult" oriented than FANTASTIC FOUR. It seems the makers of this movie fought hard to make this a truly "kiddy" movie. It's ironic to remember that both, the comics AND the TV Cartoons depicted more a more mature version of the FANTASTIC FOUR. In the TV series, Reed looked more like a early forties man... kind of like a George Clooney type of guy. The casting will make many a fan cringe, despite the fact that all actors did OK with their roles. No matter how beautiful Jessica Alba is, she is probably the last person I would cast as Susan Storm. Johnny Storm and "the thing" were cast OK. Reed Richards could have been someone else and also Victor Von Doom, as they really don't look the part. Another thing that would have been nice to be included in this movie would be the TV series theme song. After all, SPIDERMAN included it some way into the film. The TV series intense, jazzy flavored theme song would have been very welcomed by yours truly. Only the frantic bass line of that original theme song was somehow spliced into this movie's original score. All in all, FANTASTIC FOUR was nice eye candy and nice movie to watch, but it's also a movie that begs for a superior sequel (a la SPIDERMAN or X-MEN)and better story.