“The Surfer Brings Home the Silver Medal”

What if a malevolent entity, born in the womb of deep space, roamed among the stars and instigated intergalactic upheaval by eating planets for breakfast? What if a humanoid on a threatened world made a deal with the cosmic devil to spare his planet in exchange for his eternal servitude to the sinister overlord? And what if that harbinger of destruction showed up on earth?

That, in a nutshell, is the tragic dynamic of Galactus and his henchman, the Silver Surfer. It’s also the premise of the second Fantastic Four movie, subtitled, Rise of the Silver Surfer.

The movie opens with the media frenzy surrounding Reed Richards’, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm’s, a.k.a. the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), high profile wedding. Sue is beyond frustration with Reed, whose obsession with his work relegates her to making all of the wedding plans. The afternoon of the wedding finds Reed up to his elastic elbows in work as he frantically labors to bring an advanced satellite (an early detection system for rogue spatial anomalies) online. As the story would require, just such an anomaly rapidly approaches earth and trips Reed’s alarm before he can say “I do.” Riding a cosmic wave at near-light speed, the Surfer arrives at earth and crashes Reed’s wedding…of all the events taking place on the planet. Many melees erupt throughout the movie giving rise to the question, “Will the combined strength of the Fantastic Four be enough to defeat the Surfer?”

Though the sequel is darker and less frivolous than the original, both movies are equally good; though neither one is great. What works particularly well in the movie is the inherent sense of dread that surrounds the mysterious Surfer and the imposed deadline that comes with his arrival. “Wherever the Surfer goes, eight days later and the planet dies,” Reed gravely informs his team. However, since the movie chronicles our planet’s first encounter with the shinny guy, how could Reed possibly know such information…intergalactic talk radio?

Earth’s impending demise becomes a dreadful reality when the Surfer burrows massive holes deep into the earth’s mantle at various points around the globe—the tableau of one such hole inside the dried out Thames is a striking visual. The purpose of the holes is revealed when Galactus arrives at earth during the movie’s harrowing climax; the cloud-like creature’s attack on earth is yet another breathtaking sequence.

The Surfer, himself, is perhaps the movie’s finest visual effect. The scenes of the Surfer passing through buildings, flying upside down through traffic, etc., are too numerous to mention here, but the look and mystique of the liquid-chrome humanoid—further enhanced by Laurence Fishburne’s authoritative baritone—simultaneously strikes fear into our hearts and fosters respect for one of the baddest-looking villains to have come along in recent years. It’s just too bad the writers didn’t spend as much time on his character development as the FX team did on his CG rendering.

In keeping with the number of the titular team, the movie’s top four drawbacks are: 1. it’s too slow out of the starting blocks, 2. Johnny Storm/the Human Torch (Chris Evans) is so obnoxious I actually hoped the Surfer would squeeze his neck until his big, flaming head popped off, 3. Ben Grimm/The Thing (Michael Chiklis) could hold a pose in front of a brick wall and stand out more than he does in the film, and 4. Sue’s distracting, blue-ringed contacts are the only memorable element of Alba’s performance. Despite leaden acting, especially by Julian McMahon as the resurrected Dr. Doom, and the remedial dialogue that sounds as if it were lifted right out of the comic book, the movie is a fun popcorn flick that’s no better, yet no worse than the first Fantastic film.

Some suggestions for the third installment: bring back the humor from the first film; give each of the four characters something to do along with a new, personal challenge and present the movie as a thought-provoking, issues-driven action film (using the X-Men trilogy as a template) rather than a glorified comic book. That would be fantast… Uh, fabulous!

Rating: 2 1/2

Tags: Action, Fantasy