Fantastic Four

It's hard to imagine that a Hollywood "Tent Pole" film, a film that is the cornerstone of a studio's release for the year, can have been written and directed more poorly than Fantastic Four. It reminded me to Star Wars 1 - 3, where the film is full of imagination in everywhere but the script. The dialogue is stilted and forced, propped up by a paint-by-the-numbers unfolding plot with occasional jaunts into a lapse of logic. For example, I found it funny that one of the main characters comes home to find a stack of Final Notices from bill collectors, but has enough money to create massive technology to try and revert the effects causing the mutation to the Fantastic Four. Or that, even though the live in New York city, when a large action event occurs, all of the main characters are able to arrive on location within minutes, even though there are thousands of spectators between where they were and where they wanted to be.

Jon Favreau (Swingers, Elf), actor/writer/director, has a show on the Independent Film Channel called Dinner for Five, where he and four other Hollywood industry professional chat about the business. Favreau once stated on that show that film projects have three major areas; writing, acting and directing. You can only risk one of those three and hope to have a good film... so you can have a new writer but a proven director and actors, or a proven writer and director with new actors, or a new director with a proven writer and actors.

Fantastic Four is missing two and a half of the three main ingredients. As stated, the writing is poor and unimaginative with cliche relationships. Strike one of three. The directing is unimaginative and inconsistent by Tim Story, of Barbershop and the universally panned Taxi fame. Strike two of three. The cast includes Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower) as Mr. Fantastic, Jessica Alba (Into the Blue) as genetic scientists Sue Storm, Chris Evans (Cellular) Johnny Storm, Michael Chiklis (The Shield) as The Thing and Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck) as the ominous Victor Von Doom. Bad actors can always ruin good writing. Only very good actors can elevate bad writing. Unfortunatley, this cast seems to try so hard to overcome the script that they just don't come off as natural. This normally talented cast underperforms, for the most part, which only accentuates the flaws in the story and execution.

Evans, whom I loved in Not Another Teen Movie and in Cellular, is the exception to the rest of the cast. Perhaps because his character has the most interesting things to do or because he was given latitude during filmming to improvise, whatever the reason, without Evans the Fantastic Four would be a completely painful experience. He is full of life and energy and charm. McMahon, as Von Doom, soaks in the egotistical role to its greatest extent, but can only take it so far.

In the end, this is a very disappointing film when you consider all of the possibilities. However, it appears that Fantastic Four made enough money because they are making a sequel. I can only hope, for all of our sakes, that it is better than the original.