Saturday, July 16, 2005

Absolutely a storm

I watched the Fantastic Four yesterday in GSC, One Utama. It was my first time there since the cinema was opened. I must admit, it is much better than Midvalley’s. The seats are huge and comfy and there’s so much legroom. No more turning my legs this way and that way when other patrons walk pass to go to their seats.

So let me give a short review on the movie. Just five words:

It’s not to be missed.

That is true, but I think these five words are more apt: Chris Evans is super hot. Another five: Watch it for Chris Evans.

The story is about these four people who went to space and an accident happened and they were exposed to cosmic radiation and they got superpowers blah blah blah ... I am sure you pretty much know that already. If not, just type Fantastic Four and you can re ad about it on more than 10 million websites.

It is very seldom that I do away with the story line when I review a movie.

Overall, I would say that the movie is faithful to the comic books. Too faithful perhaps. There were no liberty taken or changes; not as far as I could tell. Casting was excellent; now I can’t imagine anyone else playing Reed Richards a.k.a. Mr Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), Sue Storm a.k.a. Invisible Girl (Jessica Alba), Ben Grimm a.k.a. The Thing (Michael Chiklis) and of course, Johnny Storm a.k.a. Human Torch (Chris Evans).

Though I prefer Alba with black hair (she was blond here), like in Dark Angel.

As this is the first movie, some character development was necessary. In this area, Ben has the most – his struggle accepting his distinctive and unattractive physical appearance when the other three still have their normal human form. He felt he got a very bad deal and it was making him miserable. He wanted to be 'normal' again and have his wife, and life, back.

When he embraced his powers and realised how much he can do with it (in the movie, it was to save Reed), he began to enjoy life again and was not as grumpy.

Life is not about fitting in and be popular; you can be yourself and there are people who would like you, just the way you are.

Doesn’t that sound remarkably familiar? I think gays will know what I am saying and could easily identify with this character, famous for his "it's clobbering time" line.

Clearly, this doesn’t distract from the fact that Evans is still hot and gays would love to know him better.

The kinda-boring-without-much-sparks romance part was provided by Reed Richards and Sue Storm.

The movie doesn’t pretend to be more than what it is i.e. a clean fun superhero movie. It is not groundbreaking in anyway and didn’t add any fresh perspective to the comics. In fact, critics in the U.S have even panned this movie, saying:

"This new adaptation is sorely lacking in nearly everything that made FF such a blast. It's poorly acted, written and directed."
-- Rick Curnutte, THEFILMJOURNAL.COM (OHIO)


and

"A perfect storm of wooden acting, hackneyed direction, inane scripting and laughably cartoonish special effects produces a shapeless mess more wearyingly stupid than arch-villian Dr. Doom is evil."
-- Lou Lumenick, NEW YORK POST


Don’t let the critics fool you. They tend to look at movies differently than the general movie-going population does. Trust me, the movie is enjoyable and it is fun to watch, notwithstanding the scene with Evans prancing around in just a towel for about five minutes.

Before I forget, Victor Von Doom a.k.a. Dr Doom was played by Julian McMahon, of Charmed fame. My friend found him to be quite attractive too.

I would rate FF a 3.5, with an additional 0.25 for that fantastic body of Evans, for a total of 3.75 out of 5.

But, if you really want to watch an excellent comic book adaptation, go for Batman Begins, which I feel is the best comic-book-to-screen movie of the year (4.5 out of 5).

4 comments:

Will said...

A LOT of liberties were taken, especially with Doom's character. In the comics only the four of them were exposed to cosmic radiation, and in Reed Richard's experimental spacecraft, and definitely not due to a failure in his calculations. Have you wondered why Reed keeps on miscalculating in the movie despite apparently being the most brilliant mind in the world?

Victor von Doom is the ruler of Latveria, not CEO of some public listed company and he was disfigured in an accident during university, whom he blames it on, and was his roomate at that time. That's why he took to wearing an iron mask. He has no special powers except being a genius inventor with a powerful suit.

Anal Will

Derek said...

Yup, you are right about Reed Richards.

I don't really know much of Doom's origins. Thanks for the little bit of history there. ;P

Francis Ford Faggola said...

I agree with Will about hot Victor Von Doom... but other than that, it is quite faithful to the comics....

The guys were hot in this movie... I prefer Doom or Reed though...

Derek, Jessica Alba is very pretty and has proven that she could pull off Sue Storm but in my mind, Charlize Theron was the perfect Sue Storm as is Angela Bassett for Storm in X-Men, rather than Halle Berry. But hey, we're not Hollywood producers now are we?

Spot said...

holden - stupid shortie halle berry should NEVER have been cast as Storm, what kind of godawful@^%#@%^! miscasting was that about..and TWICE too!!! and Anna Pacquin as Rogue??? wtf???

my choice would be Iman (david bowie's wife) for Storm (angela basset is abit too fierce) and Angelina Jolie as Rogue.

Hollywood seems to be bent on casting kids in these comicbook roles. Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl are played by too young actors (Sue Richards was SO NOT a sexpot in the comics). Same goes for Rogue and Cyclops in the X-Men movies.

As for Julian McMahon (another bad choice as Doom), i'd like to see him as Batman actually.