Fantastic Four

[taxidriver]

Director: Tim Story (oh, the irony...)
Cast: Jessica Alba, Ioan Grufford, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon

I am not by nature an unhappy person. I try to be kind to people, even if they irritate the living crap out of me. I am not a manic-depressive. I don't cry when it rains, or see an old person and get a sharp reminder of my own fragile mortality. In fact, I'd say I'm actually quite an optimistic, friendly and cheerful kinda guy. But having just seen Fantastic Four, I am now a quivering wreck, a bundle of rage just waiting for someone to piss me off, so I can give them a taste of the misery and terrible discomfort I experienced watching this pathetic excuse for a film.

Now, you may think I am being too harsh. After all, this is a family friendly comic book adaptation; you don't expect many soul-searching themes of existentialist angst, or intense exploration of character relationships. Having said this, FF still makes me very sad. There's a humdrum plot to begin with: bunch of scientists (if only brainy astro-physicists were this good-looking in real life) on a spaceship experience a big space storm thingy which grants them all super powers. By the end of the film you'll wish the storm had just engulfed them all in a fiery inferno of doom.

So the initial plot is unoriginal and crap. Next, the superpowers: invisible girl? How fucking original. A girl who is invisible. This lame power might have been excusable had the girl in question not been Jessica Alba. I figured I could spend my time eating popcorn and ogling this beauty, but no, instead she only goes and makes herself invisible. Great. Michael Chiklis is The Thing, essentially a big walking rock. Um… anything else? No, that's pretty much it. This is just saved by Chiklis's immense coolness, one of the few redeeming features of this film (for the un-initiated, Chiklis plays badass cop Vic Makay in The Shield, the coolest cop show on TV). There's some guy who can make himself spontaneously combust at will, which is quite cool, except he's such a smug cunt it's hard to respect him. Then there's the icing on the cake: Welsh actor Ioan Grufford is Stretchy Elastic Man, or something equally stupid. His power is that he can make himself go all stretchy, which is shown in horribly obvious CGI style. You have to feel he got the short straw in all this.

So, the super powers are stupid, the characters themselves are clichéd and awful: some dumb love triangle with the hero and the villain and Jessica Alba, the rebellious young brother who spends his time snowboarding, stunt biking and jacking off to his own reflection in the mirror. The action is a crappy re-hash of Spiderman and X-Men set pieces, albeit handled more clumsily.

The person who went to see it with me said it was good 'cos the filmmakers stayed true to the source material. This led me to ask the question, “If the source material was so weak, why adapt it?” I can't believe that Marvel's oldest comic book could be this bad. Sin City managed it, X-Men managed it, Blade managed it, all because each director brought a unique feel and look to the project. FF on the other hand is bland and old, in that we have seen it all before.

Good:
Michael Chiklis
The dude that gets all the chicks in Nip/Tuck is the bad guy
The fire guy does look quite cool when he's on fire

Bad:
Dull, meandering plot with no clear direction and riddled with cliches
Stereotypical characters
Rubbish super powers
Forced humour and 'charm'
Woeful misunderstanding on the part of the writers of what is 'cool' in young people's eyes
Jessica Alba is invisible for half the film
Cheesy PC bit where Michael Chikis is 'accepted for who he is' by - wait for it - a black blind women. I kid you not.

See this if you liked... Pain and agony. And BOREDOM. In large doses.

[Phoenix]

I think perhaps you took the movie too seriously. I, having the lowest expectations on the planet (although Smitty's review of it gave me some hope), thought it was a FUN overall movie. I view it as a comedy among the super hero movies. There were plenty of fun scenes that elicited giggles from myself! I won't list them here for fear of spoilers for those who haven't seen the movie but I assure you they're fun! Great for kids.

Harping on how 'unoriginal' their powers are is a moot point: these are the powers from the beloved comic book. The writers do stray from the original source work: in the original Dr.Doom isn't in space with them! He's not even in the original comic till the third or fourth issue. Perhaps your friend referred to the 'Ultimate' versions of the FF but even in that book they are teens. Moleman was the original villain and I assure you that would have been a bit lamer I think in the movie.

For me, superhero movies go gravely wrong when they VASTLY differ from their source material: Elektra & Catwoman being the greatest recent examples. Those movies gave me the feelings you experienced in this film.

As for your fault w/Jessica Alba not being visible in the film enough, I am very thankful she was not! The audience seeing this movie isn't ALL male you know and I can only handle so much of her limited acting range. There were plenty of shots of her wearing low cut clothing and tight spandex thank you very much! Plus plenty of scenes of her in her undies as she gets 'undressed' to become invisible.

I'm not sure what you were expecting but this is 100% a popcorn film. I recommend it for the Marvel fans out there!

[Heineken Skywalker]

What's your score, taxidriver? I'm assuming it's "Hell no!", but you didn't actually vote.

[taxidriver]

Hell yes its hell no! if you see what i mean...

[Bartwald]

This is one of those rare films I don't intend on watching. Ever. I think.

[Quorthon]

I think you got something but missed it when you reminded us that it's Marvel's oldest super-hero property. It was the first Super-Hero comic post-50's era meltdown (thanks to government censorship) and was successful for it's originality and unusual character depth. Remember, when the Thing hated being the Thing--that had never been done in comics before! A hero hating what he is? Never!!

X-Men, Blade, Spider-Man--all came after, and were much improved upon story-wise. Super-Man and Batman were the only real survivors of the pre-50's meltdown, and they had very little depth for damn near 40 years. FF originally turned that all around.

Despite your review, I still plan to see it (if I'm not too late), but your review was nevertheless pretty damn entertaining. Kudos!

[DrLenera]

I wouldn't say Fantastic Four was especially bad,but it wasn't good either,I found it just dull,uninteresting. Mostly uncharismatic leads,hardly any action {think about it,you've got the freeway jam and the end battle and that's really it},mediocre effects,it was just DULL,and I really wanted to like it,especially as I'm one of the few who was disappointed with Batman Begins. But at least that had it's interesting aspects. I don't think the Fantastic Four filmmakers really cared about what they were making. Maybe eventually they'll make another one and get it right.

[Phoenix]

The votes are an even split! Did no one else see it?!?

[Quorthon]

drlenera said:

I wouldn't say Fantastic Four was especially bad,but it wasn't good either,I found it just dull,uninteresting. Mostly uncharismatic leads,hardly any action {think about it,you've got the freeway jam and the end battle and that's really it},mediocre effects,it was just DULL,and I really wanted to like it,especially as I'm one of the few who was disappointed with Batman Begins. But at least that had it's interesting aspects. I don't think the Fantastic Four filmmakers really cared about what they were making. Maybe eventually they'll make another one and get it right.

Supposedly, Jessica Alba wants to do two more.

[Heineken Skywalker]

Okay, I saw it last night. I voted "Mighty fine", but only because the next choice, "Ho hum" is too harsh. You really should have had one or two more choices between those.

It's pretty good, but not great. I'd say, above average.
It probably didn't take itself as seriously as say, X-MEN, which I loved by the way, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it was a comedy either.
Except for the villain, Doctor Doom, whose origin was completely reworked for the movie, it was pretty true to the comic in it's character's looks, personalities, costumes and their powers, the Baxter Building where they live and which serves as their HQ, etc.
The Thing's blind girlfriend Alicia actually is in the comic, except she's white, not black.
I didn't think Jessica Alba's acting was really any worse than anyone else's in the cast. Everyone was equally fine. The effects were pretty good, especially the Human Torch. The Thing should've been quite a bit bigger physically though.
In the comics they would sometimes have him go toe to toe with The Hulk.
I don't think this version of The Thing would stand a chance against the live action version of The Hulk that we got a couple of years ago.
As far as Marvel movies go, I'd say it didn't come close to the X-MEN or SPIDER-MAN movies, but it was much better than THE PUNISHER and a little better than DAREDEVIL.

(Haven't seen ELEKTRA yet.)

6.5/10

[Quorthon]

I personally place Daredevil below Punisher in the "quality range chart." But then again, I really don't like Ben Affleck--his character in Mallrats is the way I always figured he is in real life.

Punisher wasn't near the top of the Marvel heap, but in the middle there with Hulk. X-Men & Spider-Man are the top. Daredevil on the bottom for me.

[Heineken Skywalker]

quorthon said:

I personally place Daredevil below Punisher in the "quality range chart."

I felt PUNISHER started out pretty good, and pretty dark, with the slaying of Frank Castle's family, but at about the halfway point it started to get laughably bad. This should've been a hardcore revenge flick, but it was too watered down to be the true Punisher. Punisher worked way too hard, with all the planning and carrying out of complicated plots to get rid of his enemies. The villains think he's dead and then he announces on live tv that he's still alive and that he's coming for them. So much for the element of surprise. Just stupid.
The scene with the assassin who comes into the bar and starts playing his guitar and singing, was just so out of place that it completely pulled me out of the movie. I don't care that the character was also in the comic, it just didn't work in the movie. Same goes for the big Russian who fights Castle in the apartment. He looked like he was right out of a Popeye cartoon. It was ridiculous.
The worst thing I can say about DAREDEVIL was that the scene between he and Elektra in the playground should've been disposed of in the scriptwriting stage. Preposterous. But overall, I didn't hate the movie. And Bullseye (Colin Farrell) was a pretty cool villain. Again, it probably should've been a bit darker, but oh well. It is, what it is.
I thought HULK was better than both of them.
And FANTASTIC FOUR about equal to HULK, but a completely different kind of movie.