Since 1961, the first family of superheroes, the Fantastic Four, have had one great adventure after another. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. A fun but deeply flawed movie, Fantastic Four shows us how Reed Richards, Sue Storm, her brother Johnny and their pal Ben Grimm became so fantastic. But this spends so much time setting things up that there's no time for the pay off: an exciting escapade.
The film is entertaining and moves along at a good clip, but when you reach the anticlimactic ending, you realize that nothing really happened, and that for every cool scene there was a badly directed one (or a cheesy joke, or a leap in logic) that altogether undermines the whole thing. Even the requisite cameo by cocreator Stan Lee seems forced. After nearly 45 years, the Four deserved better than this.