Fantastic!

The key thing to understand about our decision to watch Fantastic Four 2 - The Rise of the Silver Surfer is that it was entirely motivated by my desire to try out the iTunes movie rental service. For those of you not familiar with the service, it works by allowing you to download a movie through the iTunes store and watch it at your leisure (as long as your leisure starts within 30 days of your downloading the film and you have the time to watch the film within 48 hours of starting it).

There aren't a whole lot of rental choices on the iTunes store, or rather not many that fall within our typical movie watching parameters, so we ended up with Fantastic Four 2 despite having seen the original and having full knowledge of what we were likely getting ourselves into.

As expected there is not a lot to like about this pointless sequel. I find it difficult to understand how so many (probably) smart people can feel happy or even satisfied by uninspired, cartoonish effects. When I think about the sheer number of meetings, discussions, whiteboard brainstorming and man hours that go into creating elaborate effects sequences that can't stand up to work being done 30 years ago I have to shake my head and wonder who is asleep at the wheel.

Without good effects work to fall back on, Fantastic Four 2 doesn't even have the one thing going for it that one might have hoped for - exciting action sequences. Jessica Alba is terrible in the movie and the rest of the cast isn't much better. Maybe it's not really the actors that are so bad - maybe it's the writing, or maybe it's the directing or maybe it's all three. It's hard to say for sure, so maybe best to consider each aspect of the film as a complete failure on it's own.

The story starts with a lame setup about Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl getting married (she wants a normal life and for the two of them to focus on their personal life while he is distracted by work and fighting evil). When an alien force which threatens the entire planet (as well as the "Fantastic Wedding" and any further attempt at character development) arrives in the form of the Silver Surfer the team is forced to save the world once again.

In addition to saving the planet from the silver menace, the team is faced with some teamwork issues, an uncooperative military commander and Dr. Doom who only seems to be in the film so that they can fight him for about 5 minutes after he predictably betrays them.

Pain score: 6 of 10. I really disliked this movie.

We had Michelina Buffalo-style chicken snacks and EXTREME Screamin' Dill Pringles chips to eat and both were somewhat enjoyable. The chicken snacks in particular were far better than I expected.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer

I think it's actually been two weeks since I saw this film and I've been avoiding writing about it. Maybe I've been too busy, maybe I haven't felt like writing or maybe I'm a little embarrassed because I actually liked this movie. Maybe all of the above.

This is a dead simple movie that seeks only to entertain. There's really not too much to say. The acting is wooden the effects are pretty good the story is decent and a good time is had by all. You just have to know going in this is by the numbers entertainment, not much more. It's what I would call a good mediocre movie.

Gripes:

I'm really struggling to find something to gripe about. There's a lot that's half assed, and badly executed but the movie definitely is greater than the sum of it's parts, so therefore everything kinda works. It's also been two weeks since I saw this and it's fading away...

What works:


I'm not a comic book fan so I don't know the story of the silver surfer. I didn't know anything about the planet eating or his surfboard or any of it so it was fun to figure out the mystery.
The movie has a good pace. The time between set pieces is brief and seems to serve the overall story so I wasn't really ever bored.
Most importantly the movie seems totally unpretentious about itself. It knows we're watching a pulp movie and it's having fun and so am I.

Was it Better than Dungeons and Dragons:

Yes it was. Better pace, doesn't take itself too seriously, no shitty dragons, doesn't take away the will to live.

Mediocrity Scale:

It's mediocre, but good mediocre.

Food Review:

We ate some kind of chicken balls or something coated in pastry. It tasted exactly like what I would imagine chicken tastes like after going through the teleportation device in David Cronenbergs the Fly before all the bugs are worked out. (pun not intended)

We also ate Pringles EXTREME FLAVOUR DILL PICKLE CHIPS!!. If by extreme they mean really really salty, then they were extreme indeed. Also the picture of the pickles on the box looks like green turds. Not good.