TODAY'S MOVIE REVIEW: 'Fantastic Four'


From today's Oregonian:




Hey, have you seen the brilliant new movie about a dysfunctional family of superheroes who learn to work together as they square off against a jealous villain hell-bent on destroying them? It's an all-ages adventure that manages to be thrilling, funny, goofy and sort of profound!

Yeah. It's called "The Incredibles."

Before taking a richly deserved bamboo cane to "Fantastic Four," Marvel Studios' dopey non-starter of a superhero film, I'd like to point out a few things the filmmakers got right. But first: Most of us know the general mythology of the classic Marvel comic, right?

Four scientist-astronauts are bombarded by cosmic rays that give them bizarre powers -- elasticity, invisibility, invulnerability, the ability to fly and burst into flame?

And then -- between bouts of bickering in their high-tech New York skyscraper -- they use those powers and superscience to fight outlandish, occasionally cosmic villains like Galactus and Dr. Doom?

Okay, then. Here's what works, more or less:

(1) The v. fine actor Michael Chiklis, who bends rules with vigor on "The Shield," gives a surprisingly tender performance as Ben Grimm, a.k.a. "The Thing" -- an astronaut whose body turns to solid rock after he's irradiated. He does some fine emoting under a foamy mountain of bright-orange prosthetics, and he has an amusing relationship with Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, a.k.a. "The Human Torch" -- the only member of the FF who relishes his powers and fame.

(2) Evans has a lot of fun teasing Chiklis -- in a relationship right out of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby comics -- and he provides most of "Fantastic Four"'s intentional laughs. (He sort of fills the same jester-hunk role Ryan Reynolds filled in "Blade: Trinity.")

(3) "Nip/Tuck"'s Julian McMahon is amusingly smarmy (for a little while) as a drastically re-conceived Dr. Doom. (Victor Von Doom was a tragically disfigured Eastern Bloc scientist/dictator in the comics; in the movie, he's a slick New York billionaire who's zapped in space alongside the FF. And, apparently, he's also their landlord.)

(4) The Fantastic Four's headquarters, the Baxter Building, looks kind of neat.

(5) There are two decently (if not particularly interestingly) staged action bits -- a bridge rescue where our heroes first strut their stuff, and a scene where Johnny is chased through the city by a heat-seeking missile.

But beyond that? "Fantastic Four" is a total snore. It's a movie that never delivers on its premise; a movie that takes promising character dynamics and gullet-stuffs them with idiot dialogue; a movie that will alienate all but the wee and easily impressed with its frequent lurches into stupidity. It's also yet another misstep for Marvel Studios, which has blessed us this past year and change with "The Punisher," "Elektra," "Blade: Trinity" and the straight-to-DVD "Man-Thing."

It's especially painful because this same Marvel Studios raised the bar for superhero movies with the "X-Men" and "Spider-Man" films -- handing those characters to directors who rooted funnybook conceits in firm dramatic soil, putting character first and using it to explore acceptance, family and responsibility.

So what the hell happened?

How do you go from the brilliant casting of Peter Parker and Wolverine to thinking Jessica Alba would make a fine Invisible Woman, a world-class geneticist? Alba looks great in a blue jumpsuit, mind you, but delivers her dialogue like she's showing cars -- and her relationship with stretchy Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) slides out of your brain so quickly, it might as well be sprayed with Pam.

How do you consistently rip the rug out from under Chiklis' performance with moments of laugh-out-loud lunacy -- like having Ben Grimm's wife walk out into New York traffic in a negligee, or later, repulsed, show up at the end of the bridge rescue just to throw her wedding ring on the ground and walk away?

How do you make a film that very slowly builds to a complete non-starter of an action climax feel like it's actually missing even more key connective scenes? (Dr. Doom zips to and fro so abruptly, you'd think he was teleporting.)

It's a waste of mythic material. In the adjoining theater, Bruce Wayne is laughing derisively. Rent "The Incredibles" and see what should have been.

'Fantastic,' but not incredible (The Oregonian, July 8, 2005)


Posted: Fri - July 8, 2005 at 12:00 AM        

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