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Movie Review: FANTASTIC FOUR missing the “fantastic”

Yes, I wanted to really like this revised version of Fantastic Four.  I wanted it to believe that those behind the movie really understood what the 2005 Fantastic Four version was missing and just make it better.  Unfortunately, and I really do mean it, because I want all superhero movies to succeed, it did not do this Marvel superhero group any more justice than the 2005 one or the 2007 sequel.  It was missing the “fantastic”.

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The hard part for me was trying to see if I could fault any one person or any one thing about it that made it bad.  And the problem is that it wasn’t just one thing.  It was just the directing, or just the acting, or just the story.  It really was the culmination of many of those things.  The one thing that wasn’t a problem?  That Johnny Storm was African-American.  Seriously, I wish that was the only problem that viewers had with the film.  Well, no I don’t.  But if that was the only thing that was a problem, then that would just mean we have a super excellent movie and proof that there are way too many racists out there.

Remember how we thought that the 2005 version was just too campy and too cheesy?  Well, replace the campy with boring, and the cheesy with… cheesy, this is what we have.  Plus, it took too long to get to anything halfway decent, including the main characters using their powers.

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When you think of a Marvel movie, you expect to be hit with at least a few good actions scenes throughout, maybe even start with one.  But that doesn’t happen with this film, and as much as science takes a factor into what becomes the Fantastic Four, it’s not the way to keep the general viewer intrigued in the first half.  Maybe those few uber-smart people who are interested in interdimensional travel would find a reason to enjoy this movie, but then again, I don’t know if they would.

I mean, I see it, I hear it, but it lost me and I needed this story to get moving already.  It wasn’t pulling it me in as it should.  Not only that, I didn’t feel the actors really were into their roles, either.  As much as Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, and Michael B. Jordan seem to be all buddy buddy off-screen, their chemistry doesn’t really show on-screen, and thus it doesn’t connect with the audience either.  Some of their expressions and the way they portrayed these characters seemed very off.  It’s as if they were trying too hard to be serious and forgetting how to be entertaining.  Even when they say their popular catchphrases, it didn’t have the gusto it should have.  I don’t doubt they have talent as actors, but sometimes not all roles are fit for them.

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Toby Kebbell, who had aided in showing just how amazing motion-capture acting can be with his role as Koba in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, was vastly limited and two-dimensional (which I might as well say was a problem with all the characters) in his role as Victor Von Doom.

Overall, I was disappointed in the movie.  In a way, it was as if they wanted this movie to not be all the bad things the 2005 version was, and just found others ways to be bad.  It sucked the “fantastic” right out of the movie.  Maybe in another 10 years, we can have a balance between camp and dull and really enjoy these characters.

My grade: C-