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).