Not So Fantastic Sequel

Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer

This summer’s movie theme should be, “The Summer Of The Sequels.” I can think of 8 off the top of my head. They market these movies like it’s new material. It’s not! It’s just a remix of a film I watched 2 years ago. I know how I feel about a movie when I respond to questions my friends ask. Here is the actual exchange between me and my friend after the movie:

Friend: How was the movie?
Me: I bought tickets for Transformers

When the first thing out of my mouth is how I bought advanced tickets for another movie 10 days away, not good sign. Some would say it’s a bad sign. You be the judge. Our newest comic sequel , Fantastic 4 , fits the bill with familiar faces, likeable characters, new villains, and the same old story.

The movie opens with the media craze surrounding the wedding of Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba). The movie quickly picks up pace as there are sightings of a silver “comet” like figure on US spy satellites, along with these massive holes in the ground. The Four quickly piece together the what is going on. There have been planets with the strange matter activity and were being destroyed 8 days after the first Silver Surfer sighting. In order to fix things quickly team up with Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) in hopes of finding the surfer and saving the world.

The movie has on ok premise, but seems to be stale at times. In Spiderman 3 if you took away all the special effects and cheesy dialogue, there was some sort of substance left in the movie. Fantastic 4 lacked that. Not that it was a bad movie, but that it could have been a better movie. One thing that bothers me the most was that the villains weren’t villainous enough. Dr. Doom sort of shows up, does a few bad things, and then leaves. You never got the feeling that they were really in any sort of danger. The relationship between the Surfer and Glactus was talked about but it would have been great to open the movie with a little back-story. I just didn’t feel connected if you know what I mean.

The comic relief of the movie was Johnny Storm (Chris Evans). He has some pretty good one-liners in the film that kept you laughing. Somehow they went away from that in the second half of the movie. The special effects were also very good. The scene where Galactus is eating earth is amazing. As you’ve see in the trailer the Surfer just looks cool, and thanks to Laurence Fishburne he also sounds cool. The first thing my friend said to me after the movie was “I would like to have seen more of the Surfer.” I couldn’t agree more.

My Suggestion: - See it if you need to. I wouldn’t wait in line to see it. There are at least 5 more sequels to come this summer so your $9.75 can wait for Rush Hour 3.

My Grade: 2.0 – Maybe you should study harder, but nobody else is so why should you.