Jacob Hall's Review D

Flame On...

About halfway through “Fantastic Four,” my mind, currently under siege by stupidity, made note that “Batman Begins” was playing just a few theaters away. I had to restrain myself from jumping up from my seat and running to that theater. Anything to escape. “Batman Begins” proved just how good a comic book movie could be; how powerful, how exciting, how brilliant. “Fantastic Four” is close to being a new low in comic book films. It never treats it’s characters with respect and never gives them anything to do. Their motivation is lacking. Their story is full of holes. “Fantastic Four” is to comic book movies as drugs are to an aspiring honor student: the genre is growing and gaining respect, but throws it all away for cheap “fun” and gags that only leaves behind nasty side effects and leads to further destruction of the whole. “Fantastic Four” not only offended me as a filmgoer, but as a comic book fan.

What depresses me the most about “Fantastic Four” is what it could have been. The quartet of heroes are among the most interesting in the comic book universe: four scientists are accidentally mutated and gain powers: Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, can stretch and contort his body in amazing ways, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, can turn invisible and project force fields, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, can create fire and fly and Ben Grimm, the Thing becomes an incredibly powerful creature made of rock. Unlike other superheroes, who have secret identities and spend all of their time fighting crime, the Fantastic Four are celebrities. They can’t just do what they want to do like Batman and Spiderman. They actually require funding to work. Can you imagine the story arcs that could be done with that? Superheroes who have to make pitches to institutions in order to have the money to save the world.

With heroes this different, one could expect a truly unique comic book film. Apparently, a good film was never even considered, because the film is rotten at the core. The script is horrendous, to say the least. The director, Tim Story, was picked after the studio saw his last film, that great masterpiece “Taxi” (his films before that include the two “Barbershop” films). I am all for allowing a director to expand his talent. I have defended Story on many occasions. “Give him a chance,” I’d say. Now I feel pretty foolish. Story is a terrible director.

Both the script and Story attempt to emphasize what has always made the Fantastic Four great: the characters. The members of the team don’t often get along or like each other. They’ll do things together, get in fights, and develop as a family. Usually, superheroes are solitary figures, making the Fantastic Four unique for this reason. In Story’s hands, however, the character interaction is nothing better than a bad sitcom. Easily, the worst moment in the film is a montage of “humorous” moments as the four hang and play jokes on each other and do funny things. Hardy-har-har. Mr. Fantastic can’t reach the toilet paper, so he stretches to get more! Oh look! Johnny is putting shaving cream on Ben’s hand and tickling his face so he can play a joke! You better call a doctor, for my sides do seem to be splitting.

Bad humor is horrendous enough, but the script forces us to swallow so much more. I would have believed it if they had created suits that allowed them to properly use their powers, but am I supposed to believe that their suits are mutated along with them because their suits contain molecules…WHAT THE HELL? Other scenes that sure gave me a good head scratching include two completely pointless extreme sports sequences that quickly turn into slapstick segments.

Even if the script was passable, could Story have made a good film? The answer is NO. Story has no sense of style. The entire film is shot like a TV show. The pacing is poor. The editing is awkward. Scenes come out of nowhere and don’t make any sense. The CGI is usually average and occasionally just plain bad. CGI water? “Batman Begins” had almost no CGI and it was startlingly real. “Spiderman 2” had clever direction that made great use of visual effects that otherwise wouldn’t have looked real. “Fantastic Four” is a real mess!

You may have just noticed that I have not mentioned any of the actors involved in the project so far. I have decided to end this critique on a high note, although “high” is not the word it usually is.

Ioan Gruffud is bland and boring as Mr. Fantastic. In the comics, he is the smartest man in the Marvel universe and in the film we are constantly told that he is a genius, but it never shows. He actually struck me as being rather stupid. He used big words and wrote big equations, but he was never a genius. Jessica Alba was controversial casting for the Invisible Woman, and for good reason. She’s stale and dull, and I never could see what Mr. Fantastic saw in her. Also note how she follows the Tara Reid “Alone in the Dark” Rule: put an actress in glasses and suddenly we must assume she is smart!

Okay, now we come to our high notes. Chris Evans is perfectly cast as the brash and arrogant Human Torch and he plays him with enthusiasm, but he is so poorly written that it is unforgivable. Michael Chiklis is also perfectly cast as the Thing. In a full body make-up suit, Chiklis tries his best to do justice to the character who he says he has been a fan of all his life. Considering that the script tries to make him the tragic figure he should be at some points and then suddenly uses him for painful comic relief, one wonders if Chiklis even knew that they were destroying the character he loved (particularly in the final scene, which goes against everything the character ever stood for).

The highlight of the film is Julian McMahon is archvillain Dr. Doom. Although they have changed his perfect comic origin and have given him powers, McMahon is perfectly cast and is delightfully evil. By the end of the film, I was rooting for him to take out the Fantastic Four!

Tack on a musical score that is underwhelming at its best and painful and it’s worst, and you’ve got one of the worst films of 2005. I was humiliated to be sitting in the theatre, watching this, knowing that “War of the Worlds” was next door. Walking into the theatre, I noted that this was the same theater I saw “Spiderman 2” in. Marvel needs to get it’s act together. If it just through one of it’s most iconic comics to the dogs, what can we expect from future Spiderman and X-Men movies? As a movie fan, please, hire artists to make them.

As a comic fan, please, hire people who “get it.”

© Written by Jacob Hall

How We Rated This Film TC Candler - N/A   Richard Propes - N/A   Jacob Hall - D

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