Whatever Four

Maybe I've just seen one too many comic book movies. Or maybe, at 41, I slipped over the perimeter in which "heroes in tights" can still trip my trigger. Or maybe, FOX's new fantastical budget comic book project is just a mediocre movie despite its cool CGI and high level production values.

I suppose if I could make myself give the movie's problems a bit of thought, I would say that there was too much backstory and plot points awkwardly stuffed into the first act in the piece. The result was the movie was very episodic, in a mad rush to get out a lot of information, very little of which added anything to my engagement with the main characters.

The movie was very badly miscast. The villain ended up being the most engaging character. I never cared about any of the heroes. Maybe if they had named them the "Earnest Four" or the "Trying Really Hard to Be Huge Stars Four"...? Most egregious was the casting of the wide-eyed buxom blond babe as an eminent world shatteringly brilliant DNA research scientist. Yeah, I'm so buying that.

As with too many studio blockbusters, Fantastic Four has lots to look at but not much to see. The movie gave a few cursory nods to the effort to be about something. But the efforts all got dashed on places like the Extreme Dirt Bike Ramp which had no business being in the movie except that kids like that stuff these days. Unpardonably, it wasn't fun enough for a comic book movie. I never felt a rush moment like I did when watching Spiderman swing through the city in that top comic franchise.

The only rush I got in the movie was seeing friend Ralph's cameo in the last scene. Fun.

There's nothing problematic in the film from a moral standpoint. Unless spending $8 or more on a comic movie that doesn't give you a rush is a moral problem for you. It kind of is for me.

Fantastic Four is what it is. Not a four. More two-ish.