I sometimes like to believe that somewhere in America, Iowa maybe, Marvel comic book creator Stan Lee has a storage garage in which he keeps all of his throwaway comic book ideas. If that were so then the Fantastic Four would be a result of Lee’s spring-cleaning: a tired ball of unfinished ideas and shallow characters. The title of the film is only half correct: there are indeed four comic book heroes, all seeming to come from vague notions of other, more popular Marvel hero’s. The Thing is kind of like the Hulk, the Human Torch is kind of like Pyro and the Invisible Girl is kind of like Storm from the X-Men (is it ironic that the character’s actual name is Sue Storm?).

But Fantastic seemed to have check out at the lobby. Like walking into a nice house and instantly taking your shoes off at the door, anyone can unconsciously abide; the true hero is the one who runs up the stairs in his muddy sneakers. Of course it would be easy for me to say that the film started, ended, and remained throughout on autopilot, but that couldn’t have been a possibility, the Fantastic Four is so shallow it never even makes it off the runway. I know that it is a completed film because I have seen it and yet the entire thing seems like it should be stuck in the rewrite stages of pre-production. Either that or this is one of the best examples of downright lazy, inept filmmaking.

I guess you may be interested in the story. It involves five scientists venturing out to a space station in order to analyze how the radiation from a cosmic storm affects human DNA in hopes of using the results to cure life-threatening diseases. If successful this would of course be the greatest scientific discovery since the blood orchid from Anacondas; which if I remember correctly was supposed to be the greatest discovery since Viagra. How ‘bout that.

The scientists are Reed Richards, a genius who is on the verge of losing everything, Sue Storm: Richards’ ex, Johnny Storm: Sue’s hotshot brother, Ben Grimm: Richards’ longtime friend and partner, and Victor von Doom. If the name Victor isn’t enough to imply evil scientist, than I’m sure von Doom will seal the deal. Don’t you love it when villains come so prepackaged that the word Doom is already inserted into their last name?

Anyway, there is a miscalculation and the cosmic storm comes before the team can secure the protective shields to the space station and all are exposed to the harmful radiation, which genetically alters their DNA giving them each specific superpowers. Right! I stubbed my toe the other day; it really hurt. From there the plot is so simple that it can be rounded up into three distinct actions. Scientists get superpowers, scientists want to get rid of superpowers, and scientists use superpowers and find out that they would like to keep them after all.

The film was directed by Tim Story who directed the invaluable 2002 comedy Barbershop and the wretched 2004 comedy Taxi. Here Story spends so much time thinking of clever ways to show his characters using their powers that he forgets about the characters themselves. There are endless scenes involving the Thing a.k.a. Ben Grimm, a large rock creature, breaking glasses, biting off the end of forks, not being able to pick things up and not being able to dial a telephone, that we fail to appreciate the pain of once being a human and now a man trapped inside a walking stone.

And what about the Invisible Girl’s desire to be loved, The Human Torch’s desire to use his powers to gain him celebrity or Mr. Fanatic’s inability to love the Invisible Girl because he hides behind science? Did Story not care or did he think that he could get away with this kind of blatant disregard?  

After the film I spent an hour at Tim Horton’s sipping tea with my accomplice who expressed a liking for the climatic scene in which the Fantastic Four use the scientific elements of their superpowers in order to defeat Dr. Doom. To this I asked, but where was the excitement, like when watching Peter Parker in Spiderman 2, fly from building to building in order to deliver his pizza’s on time? Then I thought about what I had said. What a wonderful juxtaposition of superpower and teenaged living that statement referred to. Of course, this film has none of that because the only thing rolling around in its empty head is spectacle. It is too downright ignorant to acknowledge or believe its characters as human beings. Of course, we don’t need to believe comic book movies, how could we? Yet the least we could expect is for them to believe themselves.