Sunday, June 24, 2007

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

2007

Staring: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Laurence Fishburne
Director: Tim Story


Okay, well I meant to do this review a while ago, but I really just needed to put it off. I was disappointed by the film, I really was. They had the perfect opportunity to pull themselves out of the whole they started to dig and make this a truly amazing experience on the level of X2.

They failed.

As a film on its own, it was decent. What was not good was the direction and editing, the two biggest things that needed to go for it this time around. As I stated a few reviews back, I was really looking forward to this film. The advertisements for it were spot on, and it looked like it could be a very serious film. Then I found out it was PG (the original was PG-13 and mostly harmless), and then soon afterward I found out that it clocked in at 92 minutes (about 87 when you take away the credits at the end of the film).

So my buddy Matt and myself get to the theater. The tickets are outrageous for the theater we’re in (they were kind of retro looking seats that weren’t even stadium seating), and the screen was kind of tiny. Damn I thought, we’ve blown the movie experience. In the meantime we’re joking on this poor guy who is “counting down” the time before the film starts by introducing some flavorless band-of-the-week or crappy straight-to-DVD show (since it wasn’t the late summer they couldn’t plug some show that would be cancelled 2 months before they stopped airing the promos in the theaters). Poor guy.

Thankfully the screen had a digital projector, and the size of the screen increased right after the trailers. Good. Then there were… what? Opening credits… for a film that has less than 90 minutes of scenes? Scratch that, more like 84 minute long film. Regardless of my feeling the graphics were pretty decent for the opening montage.

The story opens with Sue and Reed getting ready for their wedding. Reed is approached by some military suit who the audience has no set up for, so they give him outrageous and out of line dialogue to make him look like a complete jerk. The rest of the film is pretty much Johnny being relatively cocky and completely reckless, like an adult version of Bart Simpson character that sleeps with every attractive lady he comes across and a small, and almost useless return of Dr. Doom, who is greeted with open arms because it’s convenient for story purposes.

The film is pretty much aimed directly at the kiddies. The “jokes” – if you can call them that – are lame. The film has no urgency throughout, and only marginally gets close in the last 2 minutes – far too late to really care by that point. A kid might be frightened or worried, but no one over the age of 10.

The only decent scene is the end fight with Doom – who surprisingly just disappears for the last 10 or so minutes of the film without any real trace of where he is or why he’s gone. Jessica Alba is bleached completely – a striking difference between her in the first film where she just looked like she had a tan. Her contacts are absolutely terrible, and her glasses and hair make her look like the makeup and hair person was a fan of pornstar Nina Hartley.

I said this of the first film when it was released – there will be an extended cut of the film adding in at least 20-30 minutes of footage to bring it to a reasonable and logical length that actually allows the story to make sense.

Verdict: ** ½ /*****

1 comment:

Matt Ramone said...

"Let's go for a SPIN!" I seriously had vision of that line being voted on by a group of optimistic suits sitting around an oak table covered with demographic information.