Fantastic 4- *

Now, I expected this to be bad. I really did, but I thought bad in a fun way. Boy, was I wrong. Fantastic 4, rather than follow in the footsteps of recent, well done superhero movies like Batman Begins and X Men, decides it’s better off following in the footsteps of crap like Daredevil and Elektra. So, fair warning.

The plot is relatively simple. Two scientists, Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) have cut a deal with a former enemy, the rather obviously named Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon). Although, I know of a guy with the last name Kilbride, and someone still married him… Anyway, Von Doom will fund their research into cosmic storms if he gets a large share of the profits. Also joining them for the trip into a cosmic storm is Reed’s former flame, Sue Storm (Jesica Alba), and her 100% idiot brother, Johnny (Chris Evans), who is probably the most annoying character since Jar Jar Binks. Of course things go wrong, and they are all affected by the storm, gaining superpowers. Reed becomes stretchy like Gumby. Sue can become invisible and throw up plasma shields. Johnny gets the ability to light himself on fire. Ben Grimm turns into a hulking mass of rock called The Thing. Von Doom, of course, becomes evil, and turns into metal. The rest of the movie deals with Von Doom’s attempts to kill the other four, while the other four try to find a way to reverse the powers. With the exception of Johnny, who is into extreme sports and loves ever second of it.

So, all said, I am having a hard time coming up with anything worthwhile about this movie at all. The undercurrent of romance between Reed and Sue is pointless (only topped by the moronic romance between The Thing and a blind woman). Just because you try to include character development doesn’t mean it works. You pretty much want to kill Johnny the second he shows up on screen, and he only gets worse from there. The other characters are like pale imitations of better movies, running through the watered down superhero clichés until at the end they become a team and everything’s okay. The acting, with the exception of Michael Chiklis (and he barely has anything to do), is sub-par all-around. Well, I have to give Chris Evans something, because even though I hated his character with all my heart, he was the only other character I gave a damn about, even if it was utter hatred. His character never seems concerned about suddenly being able to create fire (in fact, all the characters seem to get used to their strange powers very quickly), and he spends the movie mostly just being obnoxious. His worst scene is when they stop the movie to have an extreme sports montage. Although, I give them credit more putting the product placement in one scene and just panning down a wall of ads.

This reminds me more of a clichéd exploitation movie than anything else. We have our mandatory scenes of Jessica Alba stripping down for no reason at all (of course only to PG-13 rated underwear). We have the new, strange trait of having the big action scene in the middle, and ending with an anticlimactic, stupid battle. And the big action scene? Again, another highway scene with cars flying about. Don’t get me wrong, I do love highway action scenes and cars flying about. But just because it worked in The Matrix Reloaded and Bad Boys II doesn’t mean it works all the time. And why does all of NY suddenly love the Fantastic 4 (shades of the incredibly stupid end of Spider-Man), when the Fantastic 4 is the REASON there was a huge pile-up of cars on the bridge to begin with?

I guess I could go on all day complaining about this movie, but I can sum it up pretty easy: it sucks. It just plain sucks. There’s not enough action for an action movie, not enough drama for a drama movie, and what they try to pass off as both is just miserable. This is the kind of movie studios normally release in February, and has no business occupying the same theaters as the much superior Batman Begins. Avoid at all costs.