For a brief year or so pre-puberty, I was a big comics book fan.

But I got over it (comic books, that is); I think girls may have had something to do with that. So this is less a heartfelt cry of pain about how the latest “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer” veers from the true intent of its comic book as much as a complaint about how little the makers behind this film seemed to have demanded of themselves.

Because a comic book story in film is not the same as a comic book story on film. Film is another medium entirely, and there might not have been anywhere as interesting a character in comic books to flesh out on film as the Silver Surfer. The Surfer might have remained caged within the era from which he sprang (the 1960s) except that the themes he explored – Jan & Dean and Kierkegaard; nearly limitless power but tortured; enslaved to evil ends, protecting in futility a loved one and home world – these are timeless, well understood by the comic book fan, and all but invisible in this film. For the grown-up boy who hopes for modern technology and good writing to bring to life old ink-stained pages, this film is going to disappoint.

A more imaginative filmmaker would have made this movie all Surfer: Imagine a richer storyline about his home world, his absent love, the monstrosity of Galactus and eons spent in repeating Armageddon.

In contrast, all we have in this movie are the Fantastic Four who, well, are fantastic. Actually, fantastic is not the right word as much as hot. Hot gets used a lot in this movie: Reed Richards tells off the high-school football bully by noting he now has the hottest girl in the universe; that hottest girls tells him the hotness is returned rightbackatcha; Johnny Torch goes through the film with at least a half-dozen hot things hanging off his shoulders (but nonetheless tries to seduce an iron-maiden military character who is, of course, hot), and tells The Thing his blind girlfriend is hot. Amid all this patter, Jessica Alba’s acting makes “Dark Angel” seem like Hamlet (it’s saying something when Laurence Fishbourne’s disembodied voice manages to upstage all other actors). Not to miss out on all this hotness, Stan Lee finds a way to write himself into a cameo, which just goes to prove that geniuses ought to respect their own sell-by dates and show they are really smart. In the 1960s and 1970s, Stan tried hard to convince the world about the seriousness of the comic book. Now in his 80s, it appears he’s content to let all that dissipate away in Summer drivel. ‘Nuff said!


Recommended: No

Movie Mood: Action Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: A few glitches, but mostly complete.
Worst Part of this Film: Plot