Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Review
by Darren Provine (kilroy AT elvis DOT rowan DOT edu)July 13th, 2007
In the first movie of a superhero series, we expect the film to take a little while getting started. Superman has to get here from Krypton and grow up; Spider-Man has to get bitten; Batman's parents have to die. We're willing to wait if the movie pays off when the hero gets going.
But when the *second* movie starts, in the words of Jayne Cobb, "It's time for some thrilling heroics". Superman 2 opens with all of Paris (not to mention Lois Lane) getting rescued from nuclear annihilation. Spider-Man 2 opens with Spidey losing his pizza-delivery job because he has to rescue people.
A movie that's *all* action, with no characters you care about, would be pointless. So of course you put your characters in situations where they have to face up to the problems of being superheroes, and let us share with them in the downside of having super-powers.
That brings us to "Fantasic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer", which opens with the titular Surfer leaving the scene just as a planet is destroyed. We follow him to Earth, where he wrecks havoc in Japan and Egypt. And then the scene shifts to we come up on our titular heroes, and they're ... getting bumped from first class on an airplane.
They get back to New York, and ... discuss china patterns. Then some of them ... go dancing. Then a bunch of military brass show up, and they ... have a conversation. More than anything else, this movie reminded me of Jay Leno's remark about the TV show "thirtysomething":
First, I see the wife, and she's whining, "What about my needs?" Then they cut to the husband, and he's whining, "What about my needs?" And I'm sitting here saying, "What about my needs? I want to be entertained. Can't you blow up a car or something?"
In total, there were about 10 minutes of this movie that were fantastic, and the rest of it was dull dialogue which mostly made the characters less interesting. The general in charge of finding out who the Surfer is works with Victor Von Doom, a warmed-over two-dimensional nobody who tried to kill our heroes in the last movie. The heroes might warn the the general about this at some point, maybe just "You *do* know that he attempted to murder us a few years ago, right? Froze me with liquid nitrogen, shot a heat-seeking missile at Torch, and otherwise tried to eliminate us entirely?" But no, they just seem to hate him for no rational reason, so he regards the Four as prima donnas.
Bottom line: unless you're a Fantastic Four completist, you can skip this one.
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