Fantastic Four:
Rise of the Silver Surfer

Rated: PG
Runtime: 1 hour, 32 minutes
Directed by: Tim Story

Starring:
Ioan Gruffudd - Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic
Jessica Alba - Sue Storm / The Invisible Woman
Chris Evans - Johnny Storm / The Human Torch
Michael Chiklis - Ben Grimm / The Thing
Julian McMahon - Victor Von Doom / Dr. Doom
Kerry Washington - Alicia Masters
Andre Braugher - General Hager
Laurence Fishburne - The Silver Surfer (voice)
Doug Jones - The Silver Surfer

2005’s Fantastic 4 was supposed to be a bounty of hate. Tim Story, the man who brought us classics like Barbershop and Taxi was going to take on Marvel’s first family and he was already in the hole with having The Thing talk funny and having Elasti-girl from The Incredibles force a reshoot of the climatic battle because they had such a derth of imagination the first time around.

And yet the film delivered and it delivers on repeat viewings. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s certainly as good as the first X-Men and loads better than abominations like The Punisher and Daredevil. It’s light and breezy and not weighted down with some need to be gritty so it can appease the men-children in the audience. Fortunately, Rise of the Silver Surfer continues in this tradition. Unfortunately, Rise of the Silver Surfer continues in this tradition.

The Silver Surfer (body by Doug Jones, voice by Laurence Fishburne) is not someone you want visiting your planet because he’s gonna put a bunch of holes in it and eight days after his arrival, the planet dies. It’s like A Really Inconvient Truth. But the Fantastic Four have their own problems as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba, wearing distracting, inexplicable, and unnecessary blue contact lenses for some reason) prepare for their nuptuals, Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Chris Evans) struggles with being a self-centered doofus, and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Michael Chiklis) stays as uninteresting as his rock-like physique. The film crams quite a lot into its 92 minute runtime: power-switching, three major set pieces, the problems between Richard, Sue, and Johnny, and the return of Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon).

But while the film goes through all the necessary plot beats, the film lacks energy. I like the banter and the four actors play off each other well. And like its predecessor, the film never takes itself too seriously. However, the film is laid-back to the point of being slothful. It exists not necessarily because they wanted to tell a good story, but because they wanted to launch the Silver Surfer into his own franchise, they wanted to sell products (it’s funny to a point but when the film reaches that point, you'll spot it immeadeately and it's where the joke goes from humorous to sad), and they wanted the easy money. And neither director Tim Story nor writers Don Payne and Mark Frost have the immagination to make anything particularly interesting of their unqiue characters.

X-Men 3 and Spider-Man 3 both suffered from trying to do too much and not having enough time to do it. Despite its short runtime, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, doesn’t really try to do anything more than try to repeat the success of the first film while taking as few risks as possible. The result is a film that’s at best cartoony and at worst, a waste of time and money.

Words by
Matt Goldberg
6.16.07

Rating: 7.4 out of 10