FANTASTIC FOURTim Story (USA 2005)
8.0
this film got some bad rap, i'll tell you that much! wow. okay. first things first - i thought the trailer looked good but you could also tell it was gonna end up being a tepid, crappy little flick. reviews confirmed this when the film got released and i passed on it. but then i caught the flick this morning and ... and it's not a bad little flick at all!! it's got an (almost) full-bodied personality of its own. i only have a vague memory of the Fantastic Four; the real reason i got interested in it was because of my recent discovery of MF Doom's oeuvre. lol. Doom looked and sounded so cool and the samples brought back memories of those saturday morning superhero cartoons. actually, Tim Story aside of getting Dr Doom perfectly by this much, almost gets the style right for the entire film (i would've fallen in love with it had it been shot like the dinner scene - moody and lit in primary colors). i can't say how faithful the adaptation is to the comic book or the animated series. i know they changed some stuff around. but from a newbie-ish point-of-view, it's really not manipulative. and the corniness is kept to a strict minimum. even the love story was good and believable! the performances ground that for us. from the trailer you could tell that Chris Evans stole the fucking show as the Human Torch. but what a pleasure it was to see that every lead character, not only had more depth than expected, but were given positive performances by everyone involved. Michael Chiklis brings out a fabulously gruff Ben, Jessica Alba can actually act, and Ioan Gruffudd's Reed Richards was way geekier than i remembered him being - but it worked! although there are some iffy effects at first (Reeds' stretching hands in the beginning are horrendous), as a whole, the special effects are outstanding in this film (and the dvd brings them out beautifully). it was actually a fast and easy flick to watch. given my initial reservations, i was surprised by how much i enjoyed it. check it out if you're in the mood for some good popcorn action.
Posted by Anonymous | 1:14 PM
