Eric D. Snider
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Movie Review
"Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"
Review by Eric D. Snider
Grade: C+
Rating: PG
Released: Friday, June 15, 2007
Directed by:
Cast:
As far as "sequels to bad movies that no one wanted to see a sequel to" go, "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" isn't bad. It's a vast improvement over 2005's laughably dim-witted superhero tale, though it still lacks any major high-stakes excitement or surprises. In fact, it's still not very good at all. But at least it's not aggressively stupid! Baby steps, people.
Again directed by Tim Story, who apparently can never turn off the light touch he exercised on the comedies "Barbershop" and "Taxi," even when he should, the sequel begins with Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) preparing to marry. The Fantastic Four are media celebrities, though, and they live under constant scrutiny, making a private wedding hard to plan. Plus, they're always being pulled away to save the world and whatnot.
Sue, who can turn invisible and make forcefields, wonders if she and Reed and can raise a family under these circumstances. Reed, whose body can stretch unbreakably in any direction, has a hard time getting out of scientist mode and cutting loose. Sue's brother, Johnny (Chris Evans), uses his fame to date supermodels and secure endorsement deals. In fact, call him John: "Focus-testing showed that 'Johnny' skewed a little young," he says. And Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), made of rocks and empowered with mighty clobbering capabilities, um, has a girlfriend. That's sort of all that's going on with him.
Into this mildly interesting realm of vague tension comes something slightly more dire: THE WORLD IS GOING TO BE DESTROYED! But don't worry, not yet. In a few days. See, there's this alien being called the Silver Surfer (body of Doug Jones; voice of Laurence Fishburne) who can move through solid things and change matter on a molecular level, and he has a pattern of going from planet to planet, and after he arrives at a planet, eight days later it's toast. So, you know, they'll need to stop him.
(By the way, the Silver Surfer character first appeared in the "Fantastic Four" comic books in 1966. I assume it happened because Stan Lee said, "Hey, you know what the kids are into these days? Surfing! Somebody work on that!")
But what about Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), the Four's archenemy, you ask? Turns out he's not as dead as he was believed to be, and now, thanks to his possessing exactly one piece of useful information about the Silver Surfer, the U.S. military is letting him work with the Four on developing a plan to stop the madness. Naturally, he has a double-cross in mind.
The screenplay is by Mark Frost, who cowrote the last one, and Don Payne, who wrote "My Super Ex-Girlfriend." That movie wasn't very good, either, but it had its moments, and bringing Payne onboard puts the "Fantastic Four" on the right track. There are some actual laughs in "Rise of the Silver Surfer," mostly situational, as the superheroes deal with using their powers in an ordinary world. The "Spider-Man" films, in particular, have shown how to mix the comic and dramatic in a superhero story, and it goes a long way toward making your audience feel connected to your characters.
So now that the humor angle is covered, what this franchise needs is to figure out how to raise the stakes and be deeply serious when deep seriousness is called for. Despite the fate of the world being threatened, nothing in the film ever feels tense or important. There are no epic battles, no real life-or-death scenarios. It could easily be a two-part episode of a "Fantastic Four" TV series -- and a blockbuster summer action movie ought to be much more intense than that. These flat, emotionless characters just aren't going to cut it.
Grade: C+
Rated PG, a little very mild profanity, a fair amount of mostly bloodless action violence
1 hr., 32 min.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
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This item has 16 comments
June 15, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I was genuinely shocked when this trailer showed up in the theater. Had not the first movie sucked? Who would want to see a sequel, except teenage boys flocking to leer at Jessica Alba?
June 15, 2007 at 5:34 pm
For the previews, all I saw was the silver surfer jumping out of a window, destroying the great wall of china, changing the Thing and the human Torch's form, and say,"Everything you know will come to an end." This movie really has NO depth.
June 15, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Doug Jones?! You mean the only guy with an English name in all of the after-movie credits for "Pan's Labyrinth" (he played Pan and the crazy monster with the eyes on its hands)? Sounds about right, actually.
June 15, 2007 at 11:19 pm
My question is: does Galactus make an appearance? If not, why the crap even have this movie? I know that's the real question people are asking already, but seriously. If you want real fans to watch this, and to ignore the fact that the first one sucked, you need Galactus.
June 16, 2007 at 3:26 am
I saw it. It was fun. Not a great film, but a fun flick. And yes Galactus makes an appearance. Was that a spoiler? I hope not; he show's up in the first sequence of the film.
June 16, 2007 at 8:05 pm
"Who would want to see a sequel, except teenage boys flocking to leer at Jessica Alba?"
Or to leer at Chris Evans and/or Ioan Gruffudd. I'm a Chris Evans fan myself, although I can see why you'd choose one of the others. :-) With this movie being almost passable, I might be convinced to watch it just to see him in it.
June 19, 2007 at 1:52 pm
whoever is writting all these review, I am yet to see one that actually has a likeness towards the movie on topic. Instead of critisizing movies, why don't you just stop watching them all together, or why don't you just make your " PERFECT movie by yourself and let me write the [lousy] reviews for you and see how you like it.
June 19, 2007 at 10:39 pm
This movie is too round about in making the heros (the Fantastic Four) look good. If the Silver Surfer is faster than the speed of light, can go through anything, swich your powers and destroy your planet, I think he's way more fantastic than those three plus Jessica Alba!!!
June 20, 2007 at 12:53 am
I am curious about the phenomenon shown in post #7. Why is it always the stupidest people that feel they must defend bad movies from mean reviews?
Or did I just answer my own question?
June 20, 2007 at 10:48 am
I'm hoping English is not Katherine's first language. With that in mind, I can forgive the bad English (though the faulty logic will forever be hers).
July 2, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I agree with Slash in post #9. Slash's post certainly has addressed the issue of stupid people posting. Comprehensively. Therefore, there is no point in highlighting the fact that as he is unable to intelligently dismiss Post #7 he instead (ironically) accuses Katherine of being 'stupid'. One presumes that if she continues, he will stick out his tongue and say nee nah nee nah.
Whilst I feel the pressure to jump on the bandwagon and put down the Fantastic Four movies (Particularly as not doing so will likely end with me being labelled stupid or similar) I feel that I will instead write what I really think. That would be that I enjoyed them, they were fun, quite a change to find some movies that don't believe they need excessive swearing etc. Perhaps if Jessica had gotten into a hard core love scene some people would have been happier? My only 2 real complaints would be 1. The first movie was a little predictable - oh wait...that isnt a suprise because basically all superhero movies first movies deal with the heros origin which makes it predictable by definition (what is laughably predictable is the complaints this brings each time!) and 2. We dont get to see Galactus in the second movie. Apart from that...Good job!!
July 3, 2007 at 11:01 am
I didn't go into this movie with any expectations, so perhaps the fact that I enjoyed it was because I didn't plan on being disappointed. Not being a die-hard Fantastic Four or even Marvel fan, all I was hoping to get was some light summer entertainment, and that's what it delivered - without taking three hours to do it, like some overblown sequels I won't mention by name...
No, it's not a timeless classic. But it's good clean mind candy.
July 4, 2007 at 2:42 pm
The problem with this installment is it suffers from the same fate as "The Phantom Menace", a movie primarily aimed at 8 year olds (though, the Phantom Menace, at least, was a superior movie compared to this mess). The world is about to end and all the Fab 4 can do is argue about who's going to drive? It's just sad when a movie with (relatively speaking) unlimited funds produces such disappointment.
July 21, 2007 at 5:24 am
This is my favourite movie ! Its the best !
November 2, 2007 at 10:27 am
fantastic 4 is cool its sooo nice but i only watched half but that half was wicked cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
November 14, 2007 at 9:08 am
Why is galactus a giant dust bunny? That's hardly threatening, or impressive. Glad to see they didn't try to improve from part one, just kept the same flat characters and story.