Boob's Review

As a new feature on The Fremonteer - Halloweiner's I think I will review a crappy, yet not a crappy as you would think, movie.

Last night while signing my name to the sincerely written and well thought out thank you notes The First Boob wrote, I decided to get The Fantastic Four on demand and I have to say I was surprised by how not crappy this movie was.

First of all here is a plot summary taken from imdb.com (a great site for all things movies):

"When an experimental space voyage goes awry, four people are changed by cosmic rays. Reed Richards, inventor and leader of the group gains the ability to stretch his body, and takes the name, Mr. Fantastic. His girlfriend, Sue Storm, gains the ability to turn invisible and create force fields, calling herself the Invisible Woman. Her younger brother Johnny Storm gains the ability to control fire, including covering his own body with flame, becoming the Human Torch. Pilot Ben Grimm is turned into a super-strong rock creature calling himself Thing. Together, they use their unique powers to explore the strange aspects of the world, and to foil the evil plans of Doctor Doom." Dr. Doom is Richard's old college roommate, Victor Von Doom, who is also on the voyage and whose body turns into metal from the cosmic rays. He also gets some other powers which turn him into a super villian.

Sounds exciting, doesn't it? I won't spoil the end for you but the good guys win, shocker!

I like the actors they used in the movie. First of all, two FX show stars play major parts in this movie. The guy from Nip/Tuck (which I have never watched besides the first episode of this season) who had the three-some with the mom and daughter team, plays the bad guy, Dr. Doom. He is a particularly bad actor and he looks like his face is made of plastic and his eyebrows are drawn on with a sharpie (these eyebrows are freakish... this is easily the most disturbing this about this guy and he is generally very strange looking), all of which added to the movie instead of made it worse in a weird way. Also, the Commish (from the Shield) plays the Thing. I am surprised Dennis Leary didn't show up to do some swearing and some smoking just to round out the package. The other thing is that Jessica Alba looks incredible throughout the whole movie and gets close to naked at one point (but not as close as you might like). I could take or leave the rest of them.

The movie itself was pretty good; not as good as any of the X-men movies, but better than the Batman when they decided to put nipples on the batsuit (the one with Swartzenegger as Mr. Freeze). One of the cool things about this movie though is that there was a Fantastic Four movie made by the same producer in 1994 which was apparently so horrible and cheaply done that the rumor is that they never intended to release it. They just needed to get something done so the guy wouldn't lose his rights so they hired all these people (actors, key grips, etc.) and never told anyone it was all bull. One cool thing is that Bug from Uncle Buck plays the Human Torch in that movie (look at the picture). Or maybe that's not cool - I don't know, but I thought it was.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't think I would recommend this movie to anyone besides Eric who loves all superhero movies, no matter how crappy, particularly if the movie stars a black guy (his favorite movie is Blade...seriously). Even though I don't recommend it for others, unless you are really bored and it comes on HBO I enjoyed watching it so I give it a full rack - two boobs up!