Mike Says Meh|The blog of Mike Kauspedas | Hosting by www.gearhost.com

Warning – Spoiler!!! 

Fantastic Four – Rise of the Silver Surfer. Was it a great movie? No. Was it a bad movie? No. Honestly, I just don’t have anything to say good or bad about the film. Rise of the Silver surfer was entertaining, the same way the original Fantastic 4 was. But it isn’t a movie you walk out of thinking wow that was an awesome action movie. Kind of the like the way I felt when watching Batman Begins. I think I was more excited for the trailers to Silver Surfer than I was watching the actual movie.

But I don’t want to come across as disliking the movie, because I really did like it. The special effects were amazing, especially the planet eater. Larry Fishburne did a great job voicing the Silver Surfer. But the acting aside from his voice was only adequate. There weren’t many scenes where they could stretch their acting abilities (its a comic after all) aside from one scene at the end. Spoiler! If you know the story this won’t come as a surprise, but basically the planet eater is beginning to eat Earth and one of the Fantastic Four has just bit it. I know they were all supposed to just act completely helpless, its the end of the world and there is nothing they can do to stop it. But it came across more or less as if they knew everything was going to be alright. So instead of me sitting on the edge of my seat biting my nails, I was confident that the Silver Surfer would win and Earth would be saved. At that point all I had left was to enjoy the climactic ending and special effects as he did just that.

The rest of the movie was filled with cheesy one liners and typical characters. I’m guessing this takes place in the story, the coming too of Reed Richards character as he takes on the leadership role of the Fantastic Four. But the exchange between him and the General with the “I’m the jock attitude of the General” was just too much. Then Richards responds with, “well I’m the smartest man on the planet, geeks rule, and I got this hot babe.” This was only compounded by a silly scene with Richards in a club getting his groove on. Even his slick liquid moves just looked stupid. I think it crossed that uncanny valley  as the CGI just wasn’t up to speed with what he was doing. It seemed slow … and well, fake. That and it wasn’t in beat with the music.

I can look past all that because the first Fantastic Four was just as cheesy and I thought the scene in Spiderman 3 where he one ups Mary Jane at the jazz club was awesome. (Who doesn’t want to show up their ex in a public scene as the ultimate retaliation?) This is a good movie and perfect for kids. The violence is simple comic violence with no blood and guts. I don’t think there was one bad word uttered in the entire movie. And the heroes are true heroes. The movie also didn’t try to mix in some silly political message, right or left. But go see the matinée and save yourself a few dollars.