MOVIE: Fantastic Four
Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba
Written by Michael France and Mark Frost
Directed by Tim Story (20th Century Fox)
Reviewed by Rusty Pipes

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Oh no, not another Marvel comic book made into live action!! How many of these things are they going to make? As many as Stan Lee will let them it seems!

I was worried that this would be another dismal effort like Daredevil or the Hulk, but Fantastic Four turned out to be a lot of fun, even though it's not the caliber of Spiderman, or even the X Men movies.

The story moves along quickly as Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd, last seen as A&E's Horatio Hornblower and briefly on the deck of the Titanic), Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) troop into space on important cosmic research for tycoon Victor Von Doom. The four get a dose of the all-purpose Cold War Mutagen, radiation, but instead of becoming another Spiderpeople or perhaps human Godzillas, they become stretchable, invisible, flammable and rocky in turn. In a twist from the original story though, the Von Doom is along for the ride and he becomes metallic. He used to be a mad scientist in the original, perhaps the writers thought that they needed the same kind of villian as they had in the Green Goblin to ensure the movie's success.

Actually that's the movie's biggest downfall, it doesn't add anything inventive to the basic story, like that hilarious wrestling scene that made the web crawler's movie have such long legs. OK, well there is the Human Torch's motorcycle and snowboarding stunts, and they do have Jessica take all her clothes off too, except that she's invisible... Actually, it all works quite well, I just don't see it getting that much repeat business.

The Skinny:
Did I enjoy the movie? It was a bit stretched, but it has an invisible strength that keeps it from flaming out.
Would I go to see it again? I doubt if it will be as fantastic on the second viewing, let alone the fourth.

© 2005 - Rusty Pipes