It’s Ioan Gruffudd for whom I feel the most sorry. He’s a
fine British actor who distinguished himself in, among
other efforts, the most recent television adaptation of
THE FORSYTE SAGA. In FANTASTIC 4, he’s relegated to
the role of an earnest, if super smart, beagle.
As the first installment of what the studio is hoping to be
a long-lasting and lucrative series, this effort tells the tale
of how the Fantastic Four and their nemesis, Dr. Doom,
entered the league of super heroes and, in the case of the
latter, super villain. That would be the fateful trip into
space by Reed Richards (Gruffudd) and his trusty sidekick
and space pilot, Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) to study a
mysterious cosmic field currently drifting into our solar
system. Unfortunately, Richards is known as the dumbest
smart guy in the world, meaning that in order to into
space, he has to make a deal with old MIT schoolmate
and richest smart guy in the world, Victor Von Doom
(Julian McMahon). He agrees, in exchange for most of the
profits involved in any discoveries, and for using his own
pilot, the safety-challenged Johnny Storm
(ab-o-licous Chris Evans), referred to by Grimm,
and rightly so, as an underwear model. He also insists on
including another old classmate, the comely Susan Storm
(the highly groomed Jessica Alba), with whom Richards
has a star-crossed history. That Johnny is put in charge
of Grimm is only slightly less upsetting to morale than
Richards discovering Von Doom’s romantic designs on
Susan. As if things couldn’t get any worse, that mysterious
cosmic cloud shows up earlier than expected, wafting its
mutating magic over everyone on the station. Richards
becomes as malleable as putty, Susan can become
invisible (off and on) and a wielder of force-fields, Johnny
becomes the flying human torch (also off and on), and
Grimm becomes a solid, ungainly, seriously strong, and
very ungainly rock (all the time). As for Von Doom, he just
gets nastier as he morphs into energy-channeling metal.
The script has the feel of having been sketched in with the
idea of coming back later to polish it up. Perhaps it was a
budget constraint. Perhaps limited time was the issue.
Perhaps someone, counting on the built-in audience factor
said “Hey, this is the Fantastic Four, we don’t need no
stinking polish.” What is uttered by our intrepid cast is
stale and the scenes in which they emote are either cliche
or ridiculous, from Richards walking in as Von Doom is
popping the question to Susan using a ring the size of an
ice cube, to Johnny crashing a televised extreme
motorcycle challenge with some tricks of his own because
he’s bored waiting for Richards to come up with a way to
reverse the mutations. The direction by Tim Story of TAXI
and BARBERSHOP does little help. Instead of keeping the
story flying at such a pace that the inherent silliness might
seem less irksome, he has taken as his inspiration an
industrial film of the 1950s, wherein Dick and Jane learn
the wonders of zinc while the audience snoozes in
self-defense.
As for the special effects, the notes list several pages of
credits, which makes it all the more puzzling that they are
so very unremarkable. Richards’ slipping his hand under a
door and stretching his arm to unlock it from the inside is
dubbed “gross” by Johnny, and he’s right. The invisibility
looks like a pale imitation of similar effects in James
Cameron’s THE ABYSS. And poor Chicklis, whose eyes
really do manage to convey the sadness of being The Thing,
is trapped in a cubist muscle suit that permits him to do
little else but look sad. That the suit has only four digits
on each hand and toe, while Grimm had the requisite five
is never addressed. Nor is the fact that the same pants
that fit the solid, but human-sized, Grimm are still a fine
fit for the much larger Thing. There is also an annoying
tendency to show what should be dazzling effects either
in milliseconds or at such an oblique angle. Do such things
as Richards twisting himself into a giant water spout not
stand up to a clear shot?
As for the performances, Gruffudd is sweetly befuddled,
Alba is luscious and puts on glasses when she wants to
look smart, Evans pitches his performance to be, and to
appeal to, the 12-year-old boy that may or may not be in
all of us, and McMahon is nothing so much as an urbane
Snidely Whiplash. You can almost see him wishing he had
a waxed mustache to twirl when plotting nefarious deeds.
Chicklis, with his sad eyes fares the best.
It’s always unfortunate when a sub-par film has a word
such as “fantastic” in the title. The temptation to use it to
mock the opus is as overwhelming as it is obvious.
Thus, I will leave it to the reader whether to insert his or
her own mock, which will be a creative act greater than
any to be found in FANTASTIC FOUR’s 105 minutes.
Your Thoughts?