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While Fantastic Four makes an effort to don the mindless but fun popcorn flick demeanor to legitimize its lack of real plot or character depth, the film instead bungles at achieving even that low standard of filmfare. Watching Tim Story's adaptation of the Fantastic Four to film is sort of like watching a young toddler who hasn't quite learned the proper steps yet trying to dress himself--his head is through his shirt sleeve, the shorts are backwards, one sock is missing, and both sandals are on the wrong feet. It's a goofy and childish movie, and the audience almost can't help but feel sorry for the film's shortcomings.

Four twenty-first century stereotypes go to space on the bill of their rich and greedy cohort, Victor Von Doom, to investigate a star emission in the form of an interstellar cloud. Dr. Reed Richards gets his calculations wrong, and instead of safely observing the cloud from their shielded space station, they get caught in its midst and are genetically transformed into super-humans. They mope about Richard's science lab for most of the film, as Richards studies ways to cure their "diseases." Doom, who accompanied them on the space-trip, is also transformed, but he's unfortunately prone to greediness, jealousy, and vengeful feelings, so he chooses the dark path and becomes the nemesis. He suffers irrevocable losses in his business because of the failure at the space station and plots to get revenge on the Fantastic Four.

For a crew with such amazing newfound capabilities, the Fantastic Four have very little wonder about themselves. Scenes of unbelievable feats--turning invisible, stopping a semi with pure body force, stretching past the length of a football field, burning with the intensity of a supernova--seem to exist so that X member of the crew can make some pathetic, snide one-liner. Jessica Alba is cast to do little else than flaunt her looks, while Loan Gruffudd and Chris Evans play their characters with almost no vigor or believability. The loner of the crew is the one member to whom we can at all attach; The Thing consistently struggles emotionally with his awkward plight, the worst of it coming in the form of loved ones who refuse to accept his new physical state.

There is perhaps a single great scene in the film--when The Thing smashes his entrance and spouts his classic catch phrase, cool enough to make even those dissatisfied with the borefest that lead up to the scene grin with delight. But the rest of the movie never truly excites or holds our interest. Its screen writing is shoddy, the acting moderately wooden, and the plot is not remotely compelling. _Fantastic Four_ didn't have to be a mind-blowing film, but it could at least have been entertaining. Unfortunately, Tim Story's first entry in the franchise just isn't any fun.

Jonathan Avants 7/14/05