MOVIE REVIEW: 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer'


From the June 15 Oregonian ....




Last time we checked in on The Fantastic Four, they were busy stinking up the joint.

"Fantastic Four" (2005) was a big hit and a galactic waste of raw material. There's nothing wrong with taking a Space Age comic about superhero scientists and adapting it into a kid's movie. The problem lies in forgetting to make that movie exciting, well-written or even slightly logical.

Sure, the filmmakers got a few things right: Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and The Thing (Michael Chiklis) had a great bickering-kid relationship right out of the comics. But otherwise, the film consisted almost entirely of superheroes having silly arguments in sillier costumes in barely connected scenes that built to an action climax that never happened. (And it sure didn't help that "FF" debuted in the long, long shadow of "The Incredibles." )

All the above makes it almost weird to write that the sequel, "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" is … well … it's not terrible. In fact, "Rise of the Silver Surfer" is roughly 300-percent less cringe-inducing than its predecessor. (Feel free to blurb that, 20th Century Fox.)

It's better-written, better-looking, better-acted and tells a faster-moving story than "FF1." Maybe it was my lower expectations going in, but I'd actually argue that "Surfer" succeeds on its own modest terms better than the more ambitious "Spider-Man 3" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" succeeded on theirs.

The sequel adapts one of comics' most revered superhero sagas: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's "Galactus Trilogy," which kicked off in 1966 and featured the FF fighting a planet-destroying demigod whose coming is heralded by a silver alien who flies on a surfboard-shaped rocket and talks like a Beat philosopher.

It's one of those stories that could be Pop art on the page and just cosmically silly onscreen. (Did I mention that, in the comics, the planet-destroyer is a giant wearing a purple finned helmet?) But returning director Tim Story and his screenwriters actually do a decent job making all this palatable -- removing helmet fins as needed and interweaving the doomsday crisis with subplots involving corrupt Army flunkies, the return of Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), Johnny learning to be a team player, and stretchy Reed (Ioan Gruffudd) and invisible Sue (Jessica Alba) finding time to get married amid all the paparazzi and apocalypse.

The Surfer himself (voice by Laurence Fishburne, body by Doug Jones) looks iconic and cool. There are a couple of well-staged action smackdowns. The stakes are believably high. Kids are going to love it.

However, a movie can be 300 percent less cringe-inducing than the first "Fantastic Four" and still have problems. On paper, the FF are the perfect Pop Age superheroes, and while "Surfer" represents a major step up for the franchise, they still haven't gotten their full due onscreen. Grown-up viewers may find themselves asking reasonable questions:

Why is Doctor Doom so clumsily re-inserted into the lives of our heroes? Why is Reed holding his bachelor party in the most brightly lit nightclub in film history? Did The Thing really need to belch like that, or, indeed, ever? Why are the powers and weaknesses of the Surfer and Galactus so ill-defined? And, most annoyingly for adults, why is poor Jessica Alba (who's clearly taken some acting classes over the past two years) playing a geneticist who performs nary an act of geneticism -- instead supporting or scolding Reed and worrying about her Magic Princess Day as much as she worries about the end of the world?

So, yes: You can still nitpick the franchise. Maybe the biggest compliment I can offer to the filmmakers this time around is that their fun, fast-moving story doesn't actively invite those nitpicks while you're watching it.
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B-minus; 92 minutes; rated PG for sequences of action violence, some mild language and innuendo.

'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' (The Oregonian, June 15, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - June 15, 2007 at 12:00 AM        

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