Finally had a chance to sit down and watch the FF movie over the weekend. I’d recorded the hi-def airing on HBO a week or two back and planned on spening a pleasant afternoon watching it with the wife while our daughter napped. Watch it we did, but the enjoyment never showed up to join us. This movie is such a freaking trainwreck, it makes the Roger Corman version look like a masterpiece by comparison. Terrible acting, horrible special effects and writing that John Waters would dismiss as being too camp, FF is like the perfect storm of bad movie making decisions. Poor direction, a choppy story that moves both too fast and too slow at the same time, lackluster performances by nearly everyone involved and absolutely no soul beyond the shallow “friends and true love 4-ever” theme combine to achieve a 25% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I’m having trouble believing thaat even a quarter of the people that paid good money to see this disaster managed not to feel ripped off.

When it comes to comic book flicks, I tend to be able to dismiss changes from the source material pretty easily as I can see why they tend to be made, but the shifts in the FF’s origin really just crapped things up. Tying Doom in so tightly to the FF’s powers, and giving Doom some ill-conceived electrical/metal powers just completely neuters the awesomeness of the character. Giving Ben Grimm a finace for no other reason than to lose her when he turns all rocky is just pathetic, and the entire Reed/Sue dynamic is straight out of a made for cable romance movie. Really, the only high point of the entire 100 minute ordeal is the actor that plays the Human Torch. It’s a shame that the guy got saddled with the task of carrying such a load of crap, but thems the breaks in Hollywood.

The most amazing thing about this is that there’s actually a sequel in the works. “Fantastic Four” is half the movie “Daredevil” was (damning with the faintest of praise, I know), yet part two is on the way to a theater near you. Emphasis on the “you,” because I doubt I’ll even bother with it when it hits cable.

Movie/TV, Comics