There's a point in "Fantastic Four" where Chris Evans, playing Johnny Storm a.k.a. The Human Torch asks, "Am I the only guy here who thinks all this is cool?"
One wonders if, Evans felt the need to ask that question on the set of the movie, the latest big-screen effort to translate Marvel Comics to the big screen. That trend has seen its share of hits ("Spider-Man", "X2") and misses ("Elektra", "The Punisher") in the past year. Unfortunately, this movie and its lack of commitment to any spirit of fun or "cool" splits right down the middle of the quality scale leaving fans with a messy, sometimes entertaining, but mostly disappointing misfire.
This movie tries very hard to be funny, but at the same time wants to be taken seriously in the way that the better Marvel films have been. As a result, it never really finds a voice or tone that works consistently. Instead, we're given story, characters and situations that feel as false and rubbery as Reed Richard's stretchy appendages.
Part of the problem here is the acting. Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba play our romantic lead characters, Reed Richards and Sue Storm. They've got issues. She ditched him because he's the kind of guy who would see her killer body in skin-tight outfit, yet only notice the composition of the suit's material. To him she is (can you guess) invisible.
But for all the scientific knowledge stored in the heads of the characters, neither appears to have a clue about chemistry. They run the bases of a on-again, off-again couple working through their problems. Eventually Reed comes around but it's all about as heartfelt as a Christmas card from a car salesman.
Julian McMahon is similarly ineffective as the film's heavy, Victor Von Doom. He starts the movie taunting Reed for his scientific and financial failures, and lording over the fact that he holds all the cards over his old M.I.T. chum. Then, for much of the second act, Von Doom has little to do but walk the paces trod in the past by Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin: business mogul caught in an experiment gone wrong, loses his company to "the board" and takes it out on the good guys.
Much of the movie is hampered by this kind of unmotivated behavior, spinning the characters in different directions without much rhyme or reason. Ben discovers he's transformed into a freak and, instead of pausing to ask the advice of his scientific genius friend who's standing in the next room, he busts through a wall and sprints a couple hundred miles to New York City to cry on the shoulder of his girlfriend.
Johnny seems to do much of what he does because he's bored, and who can really blame him with this storyline? After the first-act acquisition of super-powers, the Foursome has little to do except cool their heels while director Tim Story finds some way to get them back into conflict with the bad guy. In fact, "Fantastic Four" might be the first superhero movie which has a "passing time because we're bored" montage.
Although the movie has but five characters in it, there's a decided lack of ability to effectively juggle the competing storylines of Ben's affliction, Reed and Sue's romance, Johnny's ego and Doom's ?er?whatever he's up to. As such, most all of these fall flat.
The sole exception is the Human Torch. Almost all of the movie's fun moments arise out of the cocky and shallow Johnny's need to generate excitement. Evans' portrayal of Torch as a basically dumb but courageous kid who's too self-centered to see the consequences in any of his rash (or dare we say, "hot headed") behavior. As such, he's the polar opposite of Ben Grimm and provides the movie's biggest laughs.
Which brings us back to his question. Didn't the filmmakers get that this should all be "cool"? It was clear last year that Pixar got it with "The Incredibles" (really a thinly disguised take on FF), which makes it more puzzling that Marvel and Fox hit so far off the mark.
There was at least one interesting lesson in "The Incredibles": movie audiences are as comfortable and familiar with superhero shorthand as we comic geeks are. There's no need to belabor the story with explanations that transform the "comic booky" details into something palatable in the real world. Just get into your vibe and let it whip!
Instead, "Fantastic Four" bogs down with snippets explaining why Doom wears a mask or even why Thing says, "It's clobberin' time" and going through the usual paces of the media assigning the corny team name.
Don't waste time with that. The audience already signed off their willingness to suspend disbelief when the purchased their tickets. They want a villain in a mask. They want clobberin' time. Just give it to them and have fun.
The movie should have dove into the adventure with the same reckless abandon that the Human Torch character did. Instead, "Fantastic Four", the last of Marvel's crown jewels, shoots itself in the foot with its own bland seriousness, leaving us feeling like the Thing, cut off from any warmth we might feel for the characters, with little sense of the fantastic and a definite lack of cool.
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