Review: Fantastic Four 2

June 13th 2007, 12:00am

The Fantastic Four are back in action! This time, the media is all over them like celebrities especially now that Reed Richards and Sue Storm are about to get married.
And here comes the fun part! A shiny mysterious being from outer space riding a very sleek surfboard circles the globe and prepares it for its inevitable destruction by an even bigger being known as…Galactus. Yikes! Clobbering time ensues!

This
movie was…"okay",
I guess. I wasn’t a big fan of the first film — although I think I enjoyed it more when I watched it on
DVD — but this one felt like I was watching a Saturday morning cartoon except with real people. The dialogue was really
cheesy and it just didn’t have the same level of sophistication as the other “good” team superhero flicks that have come out in the past
*cough*X-MEN*cough. FF2 almost felt like a spoof and borderline comedy. And what
was with Reed Richards dancing?! But the one thing that really bothered me about
the film was the product placement throughout. I understand "why" they
do this, but every time I saw it, I just nodded and rolled my eyes. It was overkill and annoying.

Everyone returned to their respective roles and were alright. Ioan Gruffudd plays Mr. Fantastic and brought the same amount of enthusiasm to the character he did in the last film. If goofy and nerdy was supposed to be the outcome of the character, then mission accomplished.
Jessica Alba…whoa! My keyboard table just moved up! She’s just plain hot even with the fake blond hair and the really noticeable blue contact lenses.

I, however, was never a big fan of her playing the Sue Storm character and, in my humble opinion,
believe that she was definitely miscast. I pictured somebody like Elizabeth Banks. Chris Evans brings back his charm and comedy relief as The Human Torch. Michael Chiklis, who plays the Thing, was pretty much born to play this role. I don’t know if it was me or not, but it seemed like his speech had a much bigger lisp this time around and I would have liked to have seen him bash more stuff…he seemed a little more tame in this installment.

The Silver
Surfer…where do I begin? I thought he looked cooler when he didn’t have the chrome skin on. When he was all
"chromed up" and surfing the skies, I wasn’t really impressed, as I’ve
already seen that effect on a character sixteen years ago in a movie called TERMINATOR 2. Then again, it was a good translation of the character from comic book to the big screen. I just wasn’t
"wowed" even with Morpheus (aka Laurence Fishburne) doing his voice. I also don’t know how fans will react to the treatment
of Galactus in this film. I didn’t mind it and the way they presented it was probably the only way of doing it without looking too cheesy.

I wasn’t crazy about this sequel nor was I impressed with the first one. The dialogue was campy and the overall
"feel" of the film felt like a happy-go-lucky hero flick with pretty decent effects. It will probably do well in the theatres for reasons unknown to me, but I think the die-hard fans may be a little disappointed.