Fantastic Four

Movie : Fantastic 4

Drink : plastic bag of tequila




   You may have noticed that I posted the photo from the 2005 Fantastic Four up for this review.   Now you may have noticed that Johnny Storm looks like a tool, Jessica Alba is white, and Reed Richards looks like an insurance salesman that just burned his other stretchy hand on Johnny's flaming butt and is trying to pretend it doesn't hurt.  So you think to yourself, " this new film can't be THAT bad, right?"
     Right.  It's not THAT bad.  In fact, I was downright enjoying myself for the first hour.  I had a Ziploc bag of tequila in one cup holder, and a bag of blackened chicken from the Chinese place at the food court in the other.
     The slow, character building pace, devoid of adolescent joking or cheap laughs in the first 45 minutes was what I look for in a movie.  The casting of a tough but short guy as Ben Grimm was a nice touch, allowing for even more anticipation for the transformation into The Thing.  The casting of a black man as Johnny Storm was confusing at first, given that he is the biological brother of the really white Sue Storm, but that was all explained with an adoption story. Hmm, that's not really how the comic book tells it, but whatever.  The four friends all get zapped during an alternate dimension experiment instead of a space exploration like the comic book says, but whatever.  Doctor Doom gets zapped during the same alternate dimensional experiment and gets a bunch of weird, unexplained powers, but whatev...no,  ok, maybe this movie should be called Fantastic Foray into a Version of a Comic Book I Flipped Through Once Really Fast.
     As I said, it's actually pretty good at first, but then the accident happens and everything blows up and powers are introduced and there is a black screen that says " One Year Later" .  I can only assume that the writer had a Monty Python style heart attack and some Disney executive took over.  The team members are all working for the government doing...whatever,  and are really bored by their own abilities.  Johnny flies around as a flaming blip I could reproduce with the technology on my Tracfone.  Sue has to mysteriously hold her breath to perform her powers, but then later doesn't, meaning we have to hear all that heavy gasping for nothing.  Ben Grimm is sad, ugly, scary... I guess?  I don't know.  I'm actually having a hard time remembering him except for his really far apart eyes.  They are, like, really spread out.  He looks like a halibut who's eyes just kept migrating.  Reed Richards is all stretched out and gross and Doctor Doom looks like something the Green Lantern made while getting wasted on Jager while watching  I, Robot.
    I know I seem preoccupied with the way these characters look, but really,  I just can't remember what the plot was.  Maybe there was a deeper message somewhere in there.  Like, let's not try to make a ethnically diverse woman look whiter by giving her blue contacts this time and finally have an African-American actor not say " Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!"  Except, he does say that, so who knows. I guess it's about having enough time to eat your chicken, drink your bag of tequila, and then having enough time for a decent nap in some air conditioning.