Today's second movie (more to come, as today is another Saturday Movie Day for me).
Fantastic Four
This movie gets some hate but I really enjoy it.
The story is pretty simple and straight forward. Scientist wants to go out into space to do some experiments, him and his buddy can't get funding from anyone so they turn to an old "friend" for the cash. He agrees (with steep stipulations), they go up, things don't go as planned, they come back down and develop powers. And it goes from there.
Let's start with the actors. A lot has been said about the actors not being right for their roles and them not doing a good job...but I (mostly) disagree.
I discussed this in my review for the second regarding their fit for the role and their performances in that one.
The one who most seem to like is Michael Chiklis. He's definitely my favorite in the films, as I mentioned in my review for the second film. He's great for the role and definitely turns in the best performance in both film.
Evans is a nice fit for Storm and does a good job at the cocky, wisecracking, less-than-mature team member. He delivers the humor lines he has (which is a large portion of his dialog, as he is the least serious character in a not very serious film) very well and succeeds in making me laugh every time. Can't wait to see him in what will likely be an opposite role as Captain America.
Alba has probably gotten the most flack, but again, I like her in the role. It's no secret that she isn't a top quality actor, but she turns in a solid performance in this one. She doesn't have any
moments (well no one does) but she also doesn't have any
moments in her performance...unless you count the horrible line they make her say at the end of the film, which isn't her fault. More on that later.
My thoughts on Ioan Gruffudd are the same as the second film. He does a solid job as Richards, but just doesn't give the performance (or have the writing) to really make you think he's this brilliant character like you have with Tony Stark or even Bruce Wayne, who isn't portrayed as a genius in the films but you can tell he's a very intelligent man. With better writing for his character he might have done better.
Julian McMahon does (like the others) a good job too. There were complaints about him as Doom, but I like him in the role
I like his change as the movie goes on, even though it is not a large jump, from a....well an a-hole....to being an actual villain in the later portion of the film.
Like I said, they all do good or solid, nothing really standout but nothing bad for me. So my complaints are minor. And when you put them all together they work well together. Evans and Chiklis are easily the best combination of the five main actors. They're hilarious together and work good off of each other.
The humor in the film succeeds with me. I laugh at just about all of it. So good marks there.
Like I mentioned a little with the actors, there is definitely problems with the writing. I'm not expecting this to be top tier, award winning writing (and I doubt anyone would)....but can we at least use some basic logic and common sense for it please? I enjoy it overall like I said, but there's just some "What the hell?" moments in this film. First,
[Show spoiler]Jessica Alba's character has to strip down to....do what exactly? They say its to get through the crowd because Johnny and Reed can't get through....yet when she strips down (not without fading back into view so we can see her in her underwear of course 
) and goes through the crowd...Reed and Johnny simply walk behind an ambulance and get through without a problem. So why did she have to do that? For us to see Jessica Alba in her underwear of course (I'm not complaining about that though 
but at least have a real reason for her doing it). Second, Ben's weight is incredibly inconsistent throughout the film. Sometimes he's heavy enough to bend a steel beam by standing on it, sometimes he is just too heavy to ride an elevator but not too heavy to sit in a booth at a diner, and so on and so forth. How about some consistency? Third, the dialog is mostly fine with me. It's serviceable. But there is one line that never ceases to irk me. Maybe it's not annoying for some people, but for me its just so
. At the end
[Show spoiler]Reed kneels to propose to Sue and then he kisses her when she's invisible...but he doesn't kiss her lips, he kisses her on the nose. She turns visible again and says, "That's my nose silly, these are my lips."
Its just such a stupid and annoying line to me, I hate it so. Fourth, there is one part of the movie where a couple scenes are obviously not in the correct order. 1st scene shown - Sue has to flee and take her clothes off and turn invisible to get away, leaving them in the street. 2nd scene shown - they are all at the table for breakfast and Sue is wearing the clothes she just left in the street. They are flip flopped in the film and should be shown in reverse order with the scene that comes after the breakfast scene in the film coming before the street scene. So instead of 1, 2, 3 it should be 2, 3, 1.
The special effects of the film are mostly good. The light bending and force fields for Sue are pretty good looking and the fire effects for Johnny are very nice. The iffy things all come from Reed; but that's expected since his isn't something like fire or light, they had to make it look like this guy's body could stretch and twist in any way he wanted it to, which is pretty difficult to convincingly illustrate.
Complaints aside, its still a fun and entertaining movie overall, which is all it tries to be and all I expect it to be.
Rating - 4/5
I just realized how long that is....I feel like freaking Bearcat....
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
I thought the Alba kiss line was fine, he kissed the wrong part of her face and she corrected him, what was she supposed to say? 
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