A bit of time off work has afforded me the rare opportunity to head to the movies.  I don’t often get to go to the real show but this time I set out to see an old Marvel comics favourite of mine brought to the big screen; Fantastic Four.  First, I got to see the trailer for another movie I’m looking forward to.  Everyone’s favourite goth filmmaker Tim Burton has finally made another puppet animation film in the vein of Nightmare Before Christmas, it’s called “Corpse Bride”.  It looks like a hit to me.  As a Canadian I have special love for puppets, we grew up on Casey and Finnegan not to mention the Friendly Giant’s squad of talking puppets holding down the castle.  We love our puppets up here in Canada and I must say; it’s about time Tim Burton made another puppet movie!

This summer has given us an interesting twist in film culture.  There’s a general revolt against the big summer special effects films this year as if somehow the mindless action flicks this summer are worse than any other year.  This is evidenced by the mediocre reviews given anything with a healthy dose of CGI.  Maybe there will be a Tarantino style revolution as we saw in the 90s when we’ll see smaller budget idea films re-surfacing, that wouldn’t be half bad.  I went to the Fantastic Four with low expectations.  I heard reviews that explained it was too hurried, confused, too many “powers” not enough story.  Poppycock!  Let’s get one thing straight, this is a comic movie.  The CGI loaded films hitting the mega-plex this decade will be the stuff of late night movies on basic cable TV in another decade and that’s where I think they’ll be viewed with a fondness by the kids seeing them today.  I see them as a sort of guilty pleasure, the kind of late night movie that might not have ever made great film, but I can’t turn it off.  Movies based on Marvel comics are like old Roger Corman horror movies based on Poe or Lovecraft stories except in those films instead of CGI you get Vincent Price’s penetrating gaze.  Like those horror movies of the late 60s I’ll never get sick of watching another Marvel comic given the big budget, big screen treatment.  I really think the quality of the current run of comic films is top notch and the Fantastic Four is no exception.

I don’t expect critics like Roger Ebert to understand, he confuses the powers of the FF with that of the X-Men and feels the FF are a kind of a second stringer.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Fantastic Four were Marvel’s first super group.  Early FF comics were a marriage between the creative forces of Stand Lee and Jack Kirby.  You had Kirby’s way out monsters (the Thing, Mole Man’s minions) and his way out space adventures complete with cosmic rays and Reed’s wacky experiments.  But you also had Stan Lee’s humanization of the story the romance of Reed and Sue Storm, the competitive rivalry between Johnny and Ben Grim, the in fighting and bickering of a group of four who don’t always get along.  I felt the movie captured these elements with style and grace.  If the Fantastic Four had been released before the X-Men or Spiderman, I think the critics would have taken a softer view.  That said, X-men/Spiderman have already passed and if you didn’t really like them well needless to say you probably won’t like the FF either. 

Every high flying action film tries to deliver something you’ve never seen before and the FF delivers some unique action sequences.  A series of events unfolds on a bridge in New York City that escalates in the scene where the Thing stops the truck with his body, you may have seen it on all the adds.  I found the bridge scene to be a real nail biter, the first time you see them discovering their powers trying to save innocent bystanders.  Of course you get another taste of NY populist unity, Spiderman style.  In another scene Dr Doom and the Thing are fighting and crash through the floor of a pool, flooding a hotel floor below.  Those scenes are why you want to see the Fantastic Four.  Jessica Alba as Sue Storm is every bit as easy to watch in this film as she was in Sin City and the rest of the group hit the mark as their embodiments of earth, air, fire and water (get it…Fantastic Four the original elements found in alchemy).

While it’s not a great film, it’s a good summertime action flick that will be as fun to watch on cable or on DVD in the near future or as it is at the megaplexes today.  Oh, and I’ll be on the lookout for Tim Burton’s goth puppet show.