FANTASTIC FOUR

By: Wendy Craigan
Date: Sunday, July 10, 2005

Given the widely reported, tangled history of this production, it's sort of impressive that the version of FANTASTIC FOUR that made it to the screen is respectably coherent and moderately enjoyable. Director Tim Story, credited writers Mark Frost and Michael France (possibly only the Writers Guild arbitration committee knows how many other screenwriters were involved at one point or another) and a game cast give us a superhero/supervillain origin story that has a lot of good moments but never feels like it's building toward anything big.

We meet scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) as he's pleading (albeit with dignity) with old schoolmate/rival/billionaire Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) to fund his research into an astral phenomenon that Reed believes holds the key to untold benefits to humankind. Reed turns out to be right about his study subject's capacity for wreaking change when the good doctor, his ex-astronaut best friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), Reed's ex-flame and fellow scientist Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), Sue's hotshot pilot brother Johnny (Chris Evans) and Victor are all aboard the Von Doom space station, the astral storm catches them not entirely prepared. In the days that follow, Johnny discovers he can burst into flame unharmed and fly; Sue becomes invisible when emotional and can project a forcefield; Reed finds that he can stretch his body like taffy. Ben becomes mega-strong, but with a drawback none of the others face he looks like a large collection of rocks with eyes and a mouth rather than a human being. Victor, who is jealous of Reed's relationship with Sue and angered by what this whole enterprise has cost him on many levels, is going through some changes of his own.

FANTASTIC FOUR wants to balance superhero action, identity crisis drama (as personified by Ben), light comedy about reactions to sudden fame (with Johnny in woo-hoo mode and the others mortified), sophisticated romantic comedy about a very reserved man and a woman who ... well, one of the film's several problems is that Sue is not tremendously well-defined (as a character physically, she's stunning, when we can see her, that is), and illustration of existential questions about responsibility and partnership.

Individually, some of the sequences are very charming and there are some nicely-thought-out grace notes, like Reed waking up to find out that the computer keyboard is literally (albeit temporarily) imprinted on his face. However, the overall effect is disjointed, as though the film keeps restarting itself in tiny increments, even when it moves into its finale.

Chiklis finds genuine emotion in the plight of Ben/Thing, while McMahon puts impish charm into Victor, so that we do get the sense that he sees himself as the injured party, rather than just a moustache twirler. Evans gives Johnny a quality of cheery narcissism that serves the character well, while Gruffudd in the straight man role is suitably concerned and anxious.

FANTASTIC FOUR doesn't capture the imagination in the way some superhero movies do, but it's genial and lively, with a lot of moments to make you grin.