Yawn-tastic Four

The Sal and I went to check out the Fantastic Four movie today. We had time to kill after the great time we had at the shooting range and the AMC was just over the highway. Nothing much else out, so we bit the bullet and plunked down for our matinee priced tickets. You know how they say that you have to experience the bad to appreciate the good? Well, it applies to movies as well. This was a BAD movie, and that's not slang for good, it was awful.

I had terrible expectations going in. Review after review I had read at the geek sites I frequent had tore this film a new asshole, and even the ones that liked the film, mentioned some terrible flaws in plot, acting, directing, ect. I think I would have had a better time watching Herbie Fully Loaded rather than this piece of crap movie. So, what was so bad? Let me tell you.

Jessica Alba can't act for crap. She's a pretty face, with a killer body, but that's it. It was not worth the 8 bucks to see her in bra and panties for 3 seconds. Her line delivery is laughable, she can't emote for shit . . . and we're supposed to suspend disbelief for 2 hours and accept that she's a brilliant scientist? The only thing she said throughout the whole movie that was even remotely scientific was to the reporters, and I think that was along the lines of "We know as much as you folks do, and that's not much regarding our current condition".

Ioan Gruffudd, who played Mr Fantastic should have been renamed Mr Dullard. What a total bore. Nowhere did an ounce of brilliance shine through in his performance. I was expecting a little more, for him to truly act like a genius. I think there were smarter geeks in that WB "social experiment" Beauty and the Geek. Richard from that show would have made a better Mr. Fantastic. And great use of the powers guys . . . the writers of this crap had him stretch out to . . . . write on a chalkboard . . . oooh, that is Fantastic, oh but it gets better. They also had him stretch to, and I shit you not, grab an extra roll of toilet paper. I want to know just exactly who it was that came up with this idea. I need to slap him/her/it across the face with a sock full of quarters.

Julian McMahon is wasted here. He is great in Nip/Tuck playing a slimy plastic surgeon. Here, he is generic villian #4556. The rich one that has his company pulled out from under him by the board of directors which leads him to exact his revenge on them, and also place blame on his transformation on someone other than himself. Sound a little familiar? Maybe the people responsible for this had just finished watching Spider-Man . . . 'cause it sounds awfully familiar to the origin of the Green Goblin. That's not all they steal from Spider-Man . . as Victor Von Doom now has Electro's power. Electro being one of Spider-Man's regular villians. And let's not get into the fact that they botched Von Doom's backstory.

The straw that broke this camel's back though was the Thing, played by Micheal Chiklis. The Commish did a pretty good job of playing Ben Grimm . . . but he was stuck in that costume. That foamy orange turd. I swear, the Thing in this movie looks exactly like the shit I took after a week of eating only carrots. A small nitpicky thing that caught my eye . . . if a character is made out of solid rock . . don't have the costume show foamy wrinkles. ROCK DOES NOT WRINKLE! At least no rock that I've ever come across. The Thing should have been a prosthetic CG blend . . . oh well. He did look ok in the hat and trenchcoat.

The only thing that brought a chuckle and a half to the whole viewing experience was the interaction between the Human Torch and the Thing. They nailed that constant bickering and practical joking nature that those characters have in the comic. Chris Evans is convincingly cocky enough to play Johnny Storm and it looks like the bulk of the FX budget went to the "Flame On" effect. It looked great. All the other powers got short-changed in favor of this one.

The climax of a movie should hold a person's interest throughout the whole final act. This was the big action set-piece, the heroes coming together to defeat the villian. I dozed off three times. It was the most boring action scene ever. Heck, I'd actually like to call it an in-action scene. This Marvel property got the short end of the stick. What else could one expect from the director of Barbershop and Taxi. I'm surprised he didn't lobby for Queen Latifah to play the Thing. She wouldn't have needed the rubber suit.

All in all . . . a terrible movie. Avoid this like the plauge. I know it made some bank on it's opening weekend, something like 58 million, but I'm expecting a huge drop-off for this weekend in revenue. I'm going to say it makes 10 million this weekend, and then disappears. And I damn well hope it does not make it's money back for production costs and marketing. Avi Arad over at Marvel needs a kick in the pants. Something to wake him up from the buzz he's riding after the immense hits the X-Men and Spider-Man franchises have been so far. Otherwise, this crap-ass Marvel comics movies trend will continue and DC will no longer be the laughing stock of the comic movie adaptation.

iTunes Soundtrack for this entry:
Thrills - LCD Soundsystem
The Way I Feel Inside - Zombies
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) - The Arcade Fire
Better Than Most - A.C. Newman
Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
Haiti - The Arcade Fire
Rhyme the Rhyme Well - Beastie Boys
Rock N' Roll Suicide - Seu Jorge
Bombs Away - Paris Texas
The Backseat - The Arcade Fire
Beequeen - Styrofoam
Tribulations - LCD Soundsystem
No No No - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Aguas - Cartoon Network