Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: Movie Review, DVD Review, Blu-ray Review (2007)

Tim Story's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" is a big-budget bust, and while it isn't as awful as its lame 2005 predecessor, it does come close to achieving the former film's sense of decay. Nothing in "Surfer" thrills or captivates as the best superhero movies do. It's trite and self-indulgent, with Don Payne and Mark Frost's bum script generating no mystery, nuance or compelling sense of dread.

The lack of the latter is especially curious since the plot involves the end of the world, with Earth rapidly being destroyed by the Silver Surfer, a gleaming extraterrestrial with a tight bod and the voice of Laurence Fishburne who surfs the globe looking like Mercury stripped down for an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.

Naturally, it's up to the Fantastic Four to shut this dude down, which proves difficult to do for a whole host of reasons.

There's the evil Dr. Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon, preening like a peacock at the center of the farmyard), who presumably was quashed in the last film but who's back for more meddling this time around.

There's the Four's mounting celebrity, which is intrusive to all but the Human Torch (Chris Evans), who enjoys his fame to the point of isolating those around him. And there's the pending marriage between the dullest couple in the universe--Dr. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), who are given to squabbling and canoodling in ways that rub the screen raw with fatigue. As for The Thing (Michael Chiklis), he's reduced to weak comic relief and loud belching--elements that, in this movie, can allow for an actor to steal the show.

Any diehard comic book fan knows that the excitement that occurs within the pages of a comic book doesn't necessarily translate to the screen. The first "Four" underscored that notion with big, messy broad strokes. This lazy sequel follows suit.

Throughout "Silver Surfer," you never once feel that a trace of pleasure went into its production, as you did with one of the best examples of the superhero genre, Christopher Nolan's "Batman Begins."

That film was smart and beautifully crafted beyond reason--it respected its audience and thus it deepened its franchise with a fully realized vision that "Four" never mines. If it's too much to ask Story, his writers and producers to take the Four into exciting new directions--and it's absurd to think that they shouldn't, or that fans don't deserve that movie--then the series forever is going to be mired in a depressing malaise of stupidity and cliches.

Grade: D+