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Hilton Head Aug. '06 »

Weak acting and dialogue and even weaker special effects tilts this unfortunately in the direction of Roger Corman's notorious B-movie FF film from 1994. In a number of ways it totally misses the point and is at its worst when it veers to far from the comic. Watching Reed and Sue become a couple again after a pre-movie breakup is like watching characters from different movies trying to share a scene. There is no chemistry whatsoever so they would have been better off in just making it a fact that they are husband and wife rather than trying to sell us on what attracts them to each other. Dr. Doom as corporate megalomaniac sounds good on paper but how could anyone become succesful with a company called "Von Doom"? The idea of a relationship between Von Doom and Sue is so awful that no one in the movie seems to take it seriously either. And if you're going to work with the creations of the hyper-imaginative Jack Kirby you shouldn't really go cheap on the fx. The FF is all about wild cosmic, sci-fi and that takes a little work to achieve.

At times it really comes close to bringing the comic to life though. The superhero as celebrity idea makes these guys stand out from Spider-man and the X-men and I'm glad they had a little of that. And the frat-boy antagonism between Johnny and Ben was a lot of fun here. Actually, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm is probably the most successful at pulling off his character. He steals the show every time he's on the screen. Michael Chiklis is probably perfect for Ben Grimm but unfortunately his get-up invokes giggles more than anything else. Jessica Alba is nothing more than eye-candy but even if she was a better actress she couldn't do much with the laughable situations they put Sue Storm into here. And Ian Gruffold just does not come across as either genius or leader here and the movie and the team really needed that from him.

Posted at June 4, 2006 04:10 PM