One out of Five kernels
Movie review
KAYLEE BREWSTER
Rather than taking the lead from its heroes, “Fantastic Four” follows in the footsteps of its villain because this movie is doomed.
For the first 15 minutes “Fantastic Four” is decent; Reed Richards (Miles Teller), Sue Storm (Kate Mara), Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), among others, build an interspace teleportation device. In montage form you see them working together and forming friendships and just like the device they are building you think, “This could work.”
But it turns on you, bringing Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) along for the ride to another dimension, where things go horribly wrong for everyone, including the audience.
Teller, Mara, Jordan and Bell seem stiff with each other and with their roles, not really sure who they are and why. Even the simplest lines, “Come here and check this out,” are spoken with the enthusiasm of someone reading a cereal box.
The emotionless reactions feel like the actors don’t care, their characters don’t care, and in turn, the audience doesn’t care. None of the characters are likable enough to root for and none are bad enough to hate. It’s also too bad because the cast has proven their worth before in other productions but apparently director Josh Trank didn’t give them the courtesy of doing his job.
It’s also hard to give life to a character whose motivation seems to have been left on a planet in another dimension. The script (written by Simon Kinberg, Jeremy Slater and Trank) doesn’t give characters any reason for what they do. It appears as if everyone gave up on the script after the rough draft. There is no humor and it takes itself way too seriously. The lines are choppy (made more so by the painful delivery), and filled with every cliché comic book line you could possibly imagine. And that’s just the dialogue.
The plot is much worse, probably because there really isn’t one. When your characters don’t have direction the story doesn’t either and when things get really tough a rough transition is made to the next “exciting” thing.
And that’s where “Fantastic Four” fails the most: There is no excitement. The five fight scenes in the movie maybe last five minutes. If you have a comic book movie with no big climatic fight that lasts for at least 20 minutes, then you don’t have a comic book movie.
“Fantastic Four” is grossly misnamed, it should be the “Not-So-Fantastic Four,” “Fantastic Bore” or even better, “Fantastic Please, No More.” Because no one put much time or thought into making this movie, don’t waste yours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E7jxEHPMQM
