'Fantastic Four' doesn't forget its comic roots
By JEFF SALAMON
Austin American-Statesman
You wouldn't know it from the two Tobey Maguire movies, but in the comic books, Spider-Man is a funny guy who slings quips as well as webs. Same goes for Wolverine. In the "X-Men" films, Bryan Singer had Hugh Jackman play him as a tortured soul. But in the comic books he's a beer-swilling smart-mouth who calls everybody "Bub."
Hollywood, in its zeal to take comic books seriously, has lately taken them too seriously. The old '60s Batman show, with its campy vibe and Adam West's undisguisable paunch, is the cautionary tale that haunts nearly every 21st century superhero movie, from the grim "Daredevil" to the tortured "Hulk" to the dark "Batman Begins."
Twentieth Century Fox
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So give Tim Story's "Fantastic Four" credit for putting the "comic" back into comic book movies. It's not as inventive or entertaining as, say, Brad Bird's "The Incredibles" (which was basically a Fantastic Four movie in disguise), but it offers the sort of high-octane fun that Hollywood tries and fails to crank out by the square yard every summer.
The origin of the Fantastic Four, who were created by Marvel Comics veterans Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961, has been told, retold and revamped over the years, but its basic outline has remained the same: Scientist Reed Richards recruits his pilot buddy Ben Grimm and the brother and sister team of Susan and Johnny Storm to man a spaceship. When they reach outer space, a cosmic ray storm gives them super powers: Sue is Invisible Woman, Johnny is the Human Torch, Reed is the elastic Mr. Fantastic and Ben is the Thing, a walking pile of rocks.
"Fantastic Four" follows this outline loyally, though it casts the group's arch-nemesis Dr. Doom in the middle of the origin story. This time around, Doom ("Nip/Tuck's" Julian McMahon) is a wealthy industrialist who has agreed to bankroll — and join — Reed's space mission. The five of them head into the void, and all are transformed by cosmic rays.
Back on earth, the Four become major celebrities — a turn of events that worries Reed (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue (Jessica Alba), thrills Johnny (newcomer Chris Evans) and depresses Ben (Michael Chiklis of "The Shield"), who is dismayed by his monstrous appearance. While Reed works at curing Ben, Doom struggles with his own transformation, his company's ailing fortunes and his hatred of Reed.
Director Tim Story, who made his bones with the first "Barbershop" movie, has a sure handle on most of this. The film is full of small, funny bits: Johnny cooking some Jiffy Pop popcorn in his hand; the Thing, trying to grasp his new responsibilities as a public figure, telling kids to not do drugs; and — my favorite touch — a signed photo from New Wave geek-band Devo that sits on Reed's bedroom dresser, establishing his high-school nerd bona fides.
Story gets good performances out of most of his actors. Evans is the breakout here; he not only nails Johnny's cocky persona, he sinks his toothsome grin into it — those spontaneous bursts of flame seem as much a sign of his temper as his temperature. It's Chiklis, though — emoting better through a rock mask than Jessica Alba does through an excess of mascara — who carries the picture on his sturdy shoulders. He gets Ben's gravelly voice, Brooklyn attitude and sense of self-pity just right.
Chiklis also benefits from the filmmakers' decision to take a cue from the early FF comics and place Ben in a vividly portrayed New York City, not a generic Metropolis or a surreal, gothic Gotham. This is the uncanny thing the film gets right; these people feel like they're located somewhere. In a specific city with bars, diners and mom-and-pop shops, but also in a set of concrete circumstances: They're stuck with each other and with what has happened to their bodies. When the film is in its groove, all of their actions flow naturally from their predicament.
You might expect this sort of human-scale detail from the director of a film like "Barbershop," but Story has the action sequences and special effects down, too. Despite all the fan complaints that preceded the movie's release, the Thing is convincingly craggy and intimidating. And Reed's elasticity is at once fantastical and verite — when he stretches, we see the freckles on his forearms; when his hand slides beneath a door, his fingerprints morph and distort.
Still, this isn't the superhero movie of your dreams. About three-quarters of the way through, it loses its narrative momentum — Reed and Doom, our two movers and shakers, are stuck in their respective workplaces for what seems like forever, tinkering with their gadgets and making plans. And in a few places Story fails to get from A to B to C in a clear manner. The initial space flight, for instance, seems to have been truncated in the editing room: We never see the liftoff; the five astronauts are on Earth and then — presto! — they're in outer space.
Other things — Ben's wife walking around Brooklyn in her lingerie, Ben's turn against Reed late in the film, the casting of Jessica Alba as an MIT grad — make little sense.
Those are more than quibbles, but they're not fatal flaws, either. "Fantastic Four" isn't incredible — or "The Incredibles" — but it knows exactly what it is, and is happy to be no more than that. The only thing it takes seriously is its mission to entertain.
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