Constant Viewer: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

If you examine the IMDb entry for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, will find it has already been nominated for an award; namely, the highly coveted MTV Movie Award for "Best Summer Movie You Haven't Seen Yet." In that preemptive spirit, Constant Viewer hereby nominates Silver Surfer for the even more highly coveted "Worst Movie You Haven't And, If There's A God, Won't See This Summer or Any Other Time Ever" award. It's only June and the nominations haven't closed yet, but only another Pokemon, Pauly Shore or M. Night Shyamalan movie could possibly come from behind to win at this point.

Comic book movies, by which Constant Viewer means movies based on popular comic books and not Hollywood's usual superficial fare, are all the rage these days. As a former comic book and especially Marvel Comics reader, Constant Viewer is generally pleased by this trend. The Spider-Man franchise, even if the third entry was too long and too complicated, are worthy versions of the original comic books, as have been some of the Batman and Superman films. When they work, they're great popcorn movies and, at least in the case of the first Batman film, sometimes great movies, period. When they don't work, however, as in the case of the Incredible Hulk and now both Fantastic Four films, they really stink up the screen.

The first Fantastic Four movie raked in tons of cash, at least in part because the original comic book heroes were once the flagship product of Marvel in its golden age (which would be the Silver Age of comics, go figure!) and thus bought a great deal of nostalgic good will. But the more realistic, highly flawed personalities of and fights between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm that so set them apart from the cardboard characters of DC Comics' offerings in the 1960s, however groundbreaking, was really pretty much all they ever had going for them. Let's face it, "Mr. Fantastic" is not only a super-dorky name, his super power is equally dorky and Reed Richards, himself, is the ultimate dorky scientist. Stan Lee may be the Shakespeare of comic books, but the Fantastic Four is now and always has been on a par with Timon of Athens. As with the comic books, themselves, the villains are far more interesting than the heroes here.

Source material problems aside, Silver Surfer is just cheesy in every possible "Made for TV" sort of way. The plot stinks, the directing and editing stinks, the acting stinks, the dialog really stinks and the special effects are so-so at best. Ioan Gruffudd, who really is fantastic in his Horatio Hornblower outings, somehow manages to make Reed Richards an even bigger nerd in Silver Surfer than Stan Lee managed in the comics, and that is not a good thing. Michael Chiklis captures none of Ben Grimm's angst as the Thing and Julian McMahon's reanimated Victor Von Doom (one of the greatest Marvel villains of all time) is just wasted footage. In a particularly cheesy scene, Reed Richards confronts the bullying General Hager, whose subsequent fate is one of the very few satisfying moments in the film. This is supposed to be one of those hero defining, mano a mano moments you've seen hundreds of times in the movies, but here it's simply wince-inducing and made Constant Viewer want to bitch-slap Mr. Fantastic personally.

Another reviewer allowed as how Silver Surfer might be considered a good movie by an eight year old, but surely that is an insult to eight year olds everywhere unless he meant "made by an eight year old." Be a superhero, yourself and please, oh please don't go see this movie -- help save the world from any more of this cinematic bilge.