MOVIE REVIEW: The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Hi folks--Unfortunately I've been just too damned busy to see any of the new films lately. So my friend Ori wanted to post his review of the Fantastic Four sequel and personally after what he had to say I don't think I'll be seeing this stinker anytime soon. So here it is Ori's review of Rise of the Silver Surfer--

So I just saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver

Surfer...
Hating the first FF movie I lowered my expectations as
much as possible, I think they were skimming the floor
hitting popcorn bits as I was walking. Coming out of
FFRotSS I can clearly say... IT WAS WORST THAN I
EXPECTED!

This movie had so much going for it, The Surfer, Doug
Jones as the Surfer, Galactus, all the horrible
mistakes the first one did... GALACTUS! And yet they
missed every possible opportunity to make something
good. Did they learn from their past mistakes and
correct them into awesomeness!? Hell no! Why change
some piece of crap that made millions into something
awesome that can possibly make more millions... too
much of a risk I guess...I'll just go and list the good things first...
ummmm... yeah... oh! the Marvel logo at the beginning,
oh yeah the first minute of Galactus eating a planet
(You don't see Galactus so it was cool). A minute and
a half into the movie it goes bad and just keeps
going.
The surfer's CG is 85% cool (go watch T2 for some
awesome Surfer action) but the rest is atrocious, the lip syncing is horrible, and most of his facial movements look terrible. When it's real Doug in a suit the make up is also extremely wonky. The rest of the CGI in the movie was left for the last day of post production and looks like a 1997 made for TV movie.

Doug Jones moves like the Surfer should, he does all the Kirby stuff and is awesome, but it's like a nice cherry in a middle of a very moldy chocolate cake. The Thing looks worse here, his mouth is fixed in a terrible sneer and when he talks he sounds like a bad Rocky with Alicia Silverstone's mouth... His body isn't any better, it now looks 100% foam rubber and he just looks and moves like a fat man in a rubber suit, no rockiness to him whatsoever.

Sue... yeah Alba is hot, yadda yadda, get over it! Her
hair is a bad wig, she is waaaay too tan for a blond
and her acting is stiffer than the whole Thing
costume.
Reed was made to look younger this time, so he has no
white in his hair, which also looks like a bad wig,
and his character is basically as thin as he can get.
Being one of the greatest minds of the 21st century,
as he claims to be, he's not very bright... And his CG
stretching... uggg... mostly used for 6y/o oriented
jokes and relative uselessness.
Johnny, ah Johnny, the best part of the first FF
movie... The people at Fox and Mr. Tim Story realized
how good he was so they did the most logical thing and
cut his role to about 25% of what it was before, with
some terrible gags and some very cliche scenes.

Before we get to the really bad things I'll summarize
some other faults... -Tim Story cannot direct his way out of an action scene, no vision, no excitement, nothing!- The humor is just terrible falling on it's face every time, dead on arrival. Though it did make the little kids laugh ... -Geography, Time, what? nothing makes sense in this movie, the Surfer goes from Japan to Egypt to.. LA without going over the east coast (they say that) WOW! One second the FF are fighting by the great wall, someone gets punched and falls down, right into Shanghai.. yeah... there's like 3 hrs flight in
between, but who's counting... -The US army, roaming the world like no one else is there... I guess fighting in London and Germany is OK if you have a base set up in the middle of Russia....
WHO WROTE THIS THING!?

And now for the best, errr... worst of it...
- SPOILERS AHEAD-
Doom... The first thing he does after waking up, for
some unknown reason, is take off the mask. Who wants
to see Dr. Doom when you can see Victor Von Doom the
pretty boy? He gets his looks back and for the rest of the movie he's normal looking guy from Nip Tuck with 0% menacing presence.Once he gets on the Surfer's board and puts his mask on he is about 10% more menacing but that's about it for 5 minutes... getting on the board... turning silver... COME ON! Galactus... yeah that... a huge sand worm shaped cloud.. OOOOH scary... why couldn't it be a huge spaceship hovering over NYC? It opens, a huge man comes out and steps on the statue of liberty.. yeah that would be so much cooler, and before you say "But that's goofy" just think that in a movie made for 6 year olds a man in a suit would fit right in! So they stupidly set up how this thing from space that kills worlds, with actual pictures from distant planets-- kids! Only to have him arrive in the last 10 min, look like a cloud around the earth and then get absorbed by the Surfer... oops I ruined the ending for you, or maybe I saved you some time and money, it's your call. The whole scene with Galactus (and they do call him Galactus, which is cool, and the surfer is called Norrin Rad, too little, too late IMO) is so short and uninspired. There's no flow, now movement, no thrill in it. It's just one old action/Sci-Fi movie cliche after another older one.

I really have no idea how a guy like Tim Story can get
a gig directing not one, but two, of what could have
been the flagship franchise of Marvel comics. He
managed to take something that could have been as epic
as Lord of the rings, as fast and exciting as
Spiderman and as technically visually cool as Star
Wars (Just think of the Kirby tech they could have
made....) and make it into a bland, run of the mill
movie... even Lost in Space was more exciting...
ARRRRGH.... I need to take a shower, I feel like
someone shat on me...

Grade: 1 Bucket

Really though Ori probably wishes at least that the Invisible Girl's clothes were really invisible. If only he could have viewed this for 2 plus hours. Sigh---