Benign and inoffensive. Dat pretty much sum up dis movie. On de one hand, it not sink to craptastic lows of first FF movie; on de other hand, it never quite reach de lofty heights of mediocrity either.
Reed Richards and Sue Storm be in love and want to get married. Meanwhile, silver alien on surfboard fly around world creating weather disturbances. Dis pretty much sum up first 60 minutes of movie’s 90 minute running time.
Instead of quietly tying de knot in publik, Reed and Sue opt for big publik wedding – and den complain when dey keep getting harassed by paparazzi. Boo hoo hoo. Dey also end up getting upstaged by silver alien on surfboard who happen to fly by during ceremony. Johnny flame on and give chase, but get choked out for his troubles.
When he return to team, we diskover he suddenly possess strange ability. Every time he touch someone, he end up swapping powers wit dem!
Monster realize dis a superhero movie and rules of general logik may not apply, but me still feel movie should adhere to internal logik. What possible reason dere be for Johnny to acquire dis strange power? Silver Surfer never display dis ability. So why dis complikation introduced? Two reasons. 1. So dat movie can include scene where Johnny swap powers wit Sue who end up burning off her clothes and end up – ho ho ho – naked. Again! 2. So dat we have ready-made, dramatikally unsatisfying solution to problem at end of film.
Silver Surfer a real annoyance. He keep flying around de world causing trouble. FF try to stop him but keep getting in each other’s way.
Finally, Reed realize dat surfboard is source of Silver Surfer’s power. How he figure dis out? Come on! De guy’s name be Silver Surfer! So Reed create plan to use tacky-on pulse to separate Silver from surfboard. He be helped, sort of, by Doctor Doom who, conveniently, be cured of scarring and get free pass from “army”.
Reed succeed! Silver captured. His board locked safely away. Until Dr. Doom ask army if he can take a look at it. Pretty pleaze. Army say okay and – in movie’s most unshocking twist – it turn out Dr. Doom be a bad guy after all. Come on! De guy’s name be Doctor Doom!
He hop on board and surf away. FF give chase in flying car-thing Reed just happen to finish building off-screen.
Monster just one to take a moment to say idea of alien riding around on a cosmic surfboard must have been really great back in de 60’s when everybody doing LSD. Nowadays, not so cool, dude.
Reed get bright idea to give Johnny all deir powers so he can fight Surfer Doom. How he know dis even possible monster not sure but movie near its merciful end so me not complaining. Much. Sue sacrifice her life to save Silver. Johnny, wit all four powers, fight Doom. It back and forth until –
Ben Grimm (aka Thing) climb up onto crane, swing it around and knock Doom into de drink. Really. DAT was de plan?!
Wind pick up. Uh oh! It turn out Silver Surfer be a herald for Galactus de Planet Eater and Earth be doomed. But Silver Surfer have change of heart and, after curing Sue of death (Oh, he can do dat? Okay.), he fly up into funnel in de sky and stop Galactus from eating Earth. How exaktly? Why he do dis when he already said he serving Galactus to save his own family? Why do Johnny’s weird body swapping powers suddenly disappear? Shut de fudge up! You ask too many qwestions. Just sit back and enjoy give makers of dis movie a free pass so dey can cash deir unearned paychecks.
Everybody hug. Reed and Sue get married in Japan. Johnny’s girlfriend almost catch bouquet but he end up incinerating it becuz he a playah! And she, by extension, a tramp. Tee hee.
Verdikt: Dis movie less satisfying den seksual relations wit Grover’s sister.
Rating: 3.5 chocolate chippee cookies.
“Shut de fudge up!” 😆 I love it when you talk dirty!
“Dis movie less satisfying den seksual relations wit Grover’s sister.” 😳
I don’t care what anyone says, the Silver Surfer was hawt!!! 😀
das
terrible movie
Oh, Monday again already?
Why are hover boards so much cooler than surf boards that fly? I can feel that this is true, I just don’t understand why.
Our Y membership runs out in two weeks so we’ll be busy swimming to get the most out of that so I don’t know how much time we’ll have for superhero movies. Then, the museum membership is up in a month and we’ll be busy museuming. Then we gotta’ look for the next thing to do. Looks like a busy winter ahead.
You know one thing that annoys me in movies? The filmmakers thinking that they can cast someone with totally the wrong coloring for a character and then toss a wig on them or bleach their hair and they’ll totally be believable. Now, I can see when casting, say, the Malfoys, it would be really hard to find actors with just the right shade of incredibly pale blonde hair. But it’s not that hard to find white girls with normal blonde hair, so why did they cast such an obviously dark-toned woman like Jessica Alba for Sue Storm? I don’t mean that in a racist way. If they’d intentionally made her simply a different ethnicity (like Kingpin in the Daredevil movie or Nick Fury in the Avengers), that would be fine. But it’s like a bunch of the Twilight people, too. Just dying a dark-haired person’s hair blonde or giving them a wig does not a believable blonde make. If they’re going to do that, they should do like they did with the Weasleys, where the half of them that aren’t actual redheads still have such coloring that it’s believable that they could be redheads.
And I guess that’s about all I have to say about the Fantastic Four franchise.
I don’t know that this was much better than the first entry in the series, unless you’re talking about the 1994 version. Ugh.
So much lame, obvious humour – “big guy sitting in airplane seat that’s too small” humour? We’re there already in the first five minutes. Susan being the jealous housewife at the bachelor party? Getting the message about detecting the radiation at the exact moment Susan comes down the aisle at the wedding? It’s all so cliché.
Oh speaking of the wedding, why does it appear that Richard the ONLY one monitoring something supposedly so important that he absolutely HAD to work on it right away? Where are all those military guys? Did they just pressure him into doing it and then moved on to something completely different?
Since when did humanity have a real time database of any number of planets in other solar systems? They know that everywhere the Silver Surfer has been the planet has died, when all those planets are MANY light years away. Did we somehow develop sub-space communication or something?
A tachyon pulse is the answer? Why not an inverse tachyon pulse, or would that be TOO obvious? Oh wait, maybe it’s an “homage”. Yeah, that’s it.
Now that the Big Wheel (I can’t remember the actual name) is welded at the hub, how are those people at the top going to get down?
Why would the military get a known lunatic, Victor Von… oh screw it. Anyway, his only apparent contribution is to tell them they need to separate the surfer from his board. Oh, is THAT all!
When Susan goes invisible to go see what going on with the SS, everyone happens to take a break at the exact right time she needs to talk to him. In fact, they actually say “Let’s all go take a break.” These guys aren’t even trying.
The actual threat (such as it is), Galactus, is only revealed 20 mins before the end of the movie, making the previous hour seem even more flaccid. SS’s remark that Susan reminds him of his love (who Galactus somehow holds hostage, I guess? Who knows?) is completely hollow since we don’t see her before that. And, after destroying how many planets, the SS finally decides to fight back against Galactus, because Susan basically says “please”?
Why did Galactus require all those holes to be in the ground? To attach his(?) big weird claws to?
With that open cockpit vehicle, should it be, I don’t know, windier?
I wonder, if The Thing ever got kidney stones, how would they tell?
Well, at least this movie is consistent with the last one. Consistently awful, of course. I wonder if this movie is actually trying to be as dumb as possible. If so, it’s brilliantly successful.
Jessica Alba in librarian glasses? Hot. Jessica Alba with blond hair? Ridiculous.
Oh God! Not another Fantastic Four movie! Haven’t we had enough already?
Some “What The Fudgee-o” moments for me:
A comet thing flies past some fishermen on a boat. The sea instantly freezes but the fishermen, composed of 70% water themselves, are fine.
Why didn’t the Thames freeze? Can the Silver Surfer turn the freezing and power disruption effect on and off at will?
The comet thing turns out to be the Silver Surfer and we never see the comet thing again. Did the SS take on human form upon meeting its first human? Since the SS and the board are separate entities why wasn’t the surfboard visible in the comet thing?
I agree with @Shawna, I kept thinking, “Is Jessica Alba black or does she just have a really good tan?” I can’t remember the first movie, did the super power mutation turn her hair blonde or was she always blonde?
As for the new ability to swap powers, it was explained early on by Reed noticing that the radiation surrounding the comet thing was similar to the radiation that gave them powers in the first place. I assume it gave Flame Boy this extra power (as well as giving Dr Doom regenerative powers). But the power swapping thing was purely a swap. Nowhere during the movie did they show that Flame Boy could take on someone else’s power while keeping his flame ability. So when they all touched at the climax shouldn’t everyone have received flame power? Why does Grimm’s voice change so much when he’s a rock but Flame Boy’s didn’t when he was a rock?
Why are the FF so famous? We don’t see much evidence of them actually doing anything to help mankind. They’re all pretty unlikeable people.
Why did the SS decide to sacrifice himself all of a sudden? Was this the firs planet he had come across with people? Was it love? How did he defeat the planet destroying cloud thing? What role did the FF actually have in saving the Earth? Why did this movie ever get made?
Ooooh, and it looks like the SS survived and is floating in space! Can anyone say sequel? Thankfully, it seems not.
Dear Joe,
Happy New Year 2013. I’m back after the tradtionnal cold and flu and all those virus that winter gives us !
Bad Cookie Monster!
Didn’t we battle this out when you reviewed the original Fantastic Four Movie? Okay, I wouldn’t say “Rise of the Silver Surfer” quite matched the first film; however, it’s still a great cast and a fun movie, which is always watchable – especially during those times when it’s been a LONG day and I just want a light-hearted film playing in the background!
I think it’s a shame they didn’t make a third – it seemed like they were setting up the Atlantis storyline.
So no food in the movie, might have helped make it more watchable.. Food pictures usually get my attention, especially dessert… ok, so maybe I am thinking a little bit too much about food here,, ~sigh~~ damn diet..
seksual relations wit Grover’s sister Now I have that in my HEAD!!! {shudders}
JeffW: I started out with California rolls. They must be the equivalent of sushi training wheels? Around here, I’ve only seen four or five kinds of sushi. I’m impressed your kids eat sushi at all! My hubby and son won’t touch it.
We’ve got a big ice storm over us. Mississippi gets ice more frequently than snow. Snow is a LOT easier to drive on. It’s a skating rink out there. I’m home now and staying in.
G’day to all!
Grover’s sister is actually a hand puppet from Wendy’s.* Explains a lot, yes?
*Yes, Wendy’s used to give out flat plastic hand puppets, I had to put them in the trays of the highchairs. Here kid, choke on this. Oddly enough they didn’t have kids meals at the time.
Hello Joseph, (Sorry for my bad english)
it is long since I have written you more.
I saw that you want to give handouts from Stargate Art Department. I know that I am nothing to you, not a friend or your family, but I’ve always loved your work on Stargate.
I will like to know if it was possible to just send me one of these artwork, I live in France and I can pay the shipment if necessary. You would make me more than happy!
I do not know how to convince you otherwise. But now, I hope the santa Mallozzi happen to me this time!.
Thanks you in advance Joe !
[edited email]
Coming from Germany I thought, when I was watching that movie a few years back: Wow, I didn’t know we have bears in the black forest again!! Can’t movie-makers do a little bit of research, please!! I admit, in 2006 the first bear since 170 years found his way back to the very southeast of Germany and got shot nearly immediatelly, because people were so scared. But that bear in the movie would never have made it to the black forest…
From Maggiemayday: “Grover’s sister is actually a hand puppet from Wendy’s.* Explains a lot, yes?”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
@Susan B: “I think it’s a shame they didn’t make a third – it seemed like they were setting up the Atlantis storyline.”
*plugs ears and closes eyes* LALALALA
And yeah, Santa M., what’s the story with the art department prints? 🙂
Cookie–Your commitment to movies is impressive. I’m sorry I don’t get to watch these, but maybe I’ll surprise you someday and watch them one week.
“De guy’s name be Doctor Doom!” Yes, like being named Dr. Evil in Austin Powers. Pretty obvious. I did not like it when Dr. Evil developed a conscience.
“Verdikt: Dis movie less satisfying den seksual relations wit Grover’s sister.”
I’ve heard of a puppet state, but puppet sex? That must be something Elmo taught you.
@FagateOne — Welcome back; glad you are feeling better.
Cookie, when are you going to write your own superhero movie?