Fantastic Four

I attended the showing for this movie at Coral Ridge Mall on July 8 2005 at 7:30pm.

The movie starts out relatively well, another of a slew of Marvel Enterprises comic book superheroes turned into a film, following Blade, X-Men, Spider-Man, and Hulk. What better company to be in than this group of prior huge box-office grossing and well-received franchises? Unfortunately, the film hits a few snags. First of all, Batman Begins opened around a month before it, and it managed to revive the Warner Brothers' Batman franchise with its huge success (mainly due to being a darn good film). Second, Fantastic Four's script doesn't have any depth, so any strong performances were hugely outweighed by the simpering plot.

The film has beautiful visuals, not the least of which are several gorgeous actors--Jessica Alba, one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, as Sue Storm (The Invisible Woman); Chris Evans, a guy who defines the word cuteness itself, as her brother Johnny Storm (The Human Torch); and Julian McMahon, likely the best looking guy to ever come out of Australia which is a continent loaded with gorgeous men it seems, as Victor Von Doom (Dr. Doom). They couldn't have found a crew of better looking superheroes even in Superman's home planet.

The best performance with what lines he had available goes to Julian McMahon. It is truly sad that with a great actor such as McMahon, the movie and script still aren't very entertaining or complete. I do understand the need to introduce these characters for this first of the series on the group, but the film was practically a waste of time after the first 20 minutes to the end otherwise.

For the decent beginnings, small laughs and 1 great performance, I am giving the film a very low decent rating. I wouldn't bother to see it at the theatre, but it is okay to see on DVD, especially if you are bored.

Please feel free to comment on this review or on the movie itself at the forum thread devoted to it at this location.