Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

This is one of those, yeah o.k. that movies was yeah o.k. Well maybe that is too harsh, all around good movie, truly, however the thing with sequels is usually they expose any weakness that existed in the first movie and should build on its strengths. FF4: Rise of the Silver Surfer was no exception. An enjoyable sequel that did not do a whole lot to make me a big FF4 fan, but I can appreciate a fun splashy summer movie with all the visual effects to go with it.

I would rather not take the time to do a story summary here. In short the FF4 have become world famous and are now trying to cope with their new found fame. Reed, Ioan Gruffodd, and Susan, J. Alba, are trying to get married, but saving the world keeps getting in the way and just when it looks like the ceremony is about to happen, the Silver Surfer arises to make the earth ready for Galactus, the devourer of worlds. Just as an aside I much prefer the giant planet eating purple space robot to whatever it they gave us in this movie. I mean if you are going to go all the way and not attempt to base the Silver Surfer in reality, why not give me a giant purple robot that eat planets, an additional aside, I never understand the basis for defeating something called “the devourer of worlds”. That seems like a pretty formidable foe to me. At any Surfer shows up the world is in peril, FF4 to the rescue.

I have to get this out of the way now or the rest of this review will suffer. No matter how you try to slice it, Jessica Alba is not Suzan Storm; she is not even an adequate knock off of Suzan Storm. No matter how hot she is, and eve that is starting to fade because she is loosing so much weight, she is not a double PhD genius that is capable of mentally keeping up with Reed Richards and is the powerful member of the team. She is by far the weak link in this franchise, her and this knock-off of Dr. Doom. People Doom is never not in the Doom mask, he is Latverian royalty, not a shady capitalist that wants to take over the world through bank mergers and military contracts. He is a psychotic evil genius with the wealth of a nation backing his twisted plots. I might actually be a bigger fan of this franchise had they not dropped the ball so bad on two of the five essential characters.

However clearly the strengths of the movie and franchise are The Thing, Chiklis, and Torch, Chris Evans. These two are spot on and really keep the moving rolling. This sequel actually gave us more of their relationship and the rivalry/friendship that exist between these two. They really are just like brothers and both actors do a great job of portraying that on screen. This movie would have no shot if it weren’t for these two. Although Laurence’s voice acting should not be taken for granted. Granted he sounds like Morpheous trying to do a deep extra-terrestrial alien voice, but it is still effective nonetheless.

Characters aside the visuals from the movie were enjoyable. All the effects were clean and sharp. Not Pirates of the Caribbean sharp, but sharp for sure. We got a couple of very cool action sequences, with Doom on the surf board and the chase between Torch and Surfer. So from that stand-point the movie was entertaining.

All in all it was an enjoyable experience. The negatives did not out weigh the positives and assuming Jessie doesn’t loose anymore weight she is still extremely attractive, even with the worst contacts in the history of contact lenses.

GRADE – C