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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer may not get points for originality, but it does get points for entertainment. We're in the middle of a summer where many people have been disappointed by the drawn-out affairs of Spider-Man and Captain Jack Sparrow. Now here we are with a story that's neither incomprehensible (like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) nor overstuffed (like Spider-Man 3, which I thought handled it's load deftly, though many people didn't).

And the length! I've gotten a bit sick of blockbusters assuming they needed to be over two and a half hours in order to trick us into thinking we got our money's worth. Rise of the Silver Surfer is over in a cool 92 minutes. I usually tend to think 110 minutes is about ideal, but this was like a sigh of relief. It arrived, did a polished and confident job, and didn't overstay its welcome.

I'd say kids aged 8-14 are the perfect audience for this; to them, the jokes aren't quite as cheesy, and stock characters like the autocratic, imprudent general (this time played, slightly depressingly, by Andre Braugher, who should be getting better roles) won't seem like cliches. The rating - it's PG - seems to reflect this. And hey, why shouldn't it be PG? It's a family movie about a family of superheroes.

I still have not yet managed to see the original Fantastic Four, but I had a general knowledge of the characters, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to follow the plot. The titular team of superheroes are now famous in their hometown of NYC, but are still led by Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), who can bend and stretch his body to amazing lengths. He's getting married to Sue Storm, aka the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba, who aside from invisibility can also create giant forcefields. Her brother Johnny, aka the Human Torch (Chris Evans), can fly and light himself on fire, and is the cocky showboat. Rounding them out is Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, a super-strong Michael Chiklis under pounds of brown rock-like prosthetics.

The impending nuptials (which, thanks to the superheroes' newfound fame, are cleverly treated like a tabloid-friendly publicity circus) are interrupted by a new arrival from what seems to be a galaxy far, far away: the Silver Surfer, a shimmering, matter-bending man who flies around on a surfboard and seems to be able to do pretty much anything. The result is basically what the T-1000 would look like (minus any real face) with fifteen years of new special effects technology behind him.

The ...