FANTASTIC FOUR:
RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER
(Review)

If you’re a comic book fan who loves a good film adaptation of your favorite hero—and what self-respecting fanboy doesn’t?—the 80’s were not a kind decade to you.
DC’s Superman franchise was running on empty with Superman III, and that particular flight ended in a messy crash with Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. Meanwhile, Tim Burton was yet to redefine the superhero film at the tail end of the decade.
But for all the misfires DC had at the time, Marvel was by far the more evil villain in that scenario.
There were low budget attempts at Captain America and The Punisher, and inept TV stabs at Thor and Daredevil, all of them not particularly good, and some, downright dreadful.
Funnily enough, these days it feels like a Marvel renaissance, with most of their efforts falling squarely into the not-particularly-good-and-some-downright-dreadful category.
Granted, the effects and costumes are way better, but a lot of the plots and scripts, and some of the performances, could very well have traveled here on a time machine from the good old 80’s to leave us comic geeks with sleepless, rant-filled nights.*

At this point, I should establish that Marvel’s latest, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, is actually better than some past turkeys like Ghost Rider, Daredevil, and Elektra. FF:RotSS is even better than its predecessor (see reVIEW (1); Archive June 2007).
That doesn’t make it a good film though.

The plot is just as threadbare as the original’s: the Silver Surfer (frequent Guillermo Del Toro collaborator Doug Jones, voiced by Laurence Fishburne) arrives on Earth to prepare it for the coming of the dreaded Galactus (in this incarnation, a planet-devouring cloud), thus disrupting the fourth attempt at a proper wedding by Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba).
The U.S. Military gets Reed to help them, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) crashes the party, Galactus arrives, but is thwarted by our heroes.
In the midst of all this, what I can only assume are attempts at “fun” and “funny”—schtick that barely manages to be juvenile hi-jinx—pepper the 92 minute running time like fleas on a mangy dog. (And though it’s good that all the power-switching becomes a climactic plot point, the bachelor party dance is still a particularly atrocious bit.)

Just as in Fantastic Four, where there was no joy to be found in a plot, we also don’t really see much in the way of characters again.
Even Chris Evans, whose superficial Johnny Storm was the highlight of the team in the first film, doesn’t seem as convincing as he once was. And what could have been an interesting character arc (as Johnny learns some much-needed lessons in responsibility) is not fully explored.
There’s some conflict with Sue wanting a normal married life away from the media spotlight, but it’s pretty much lip service and doesn’t have the ring of authenticity.

It’s really only when the CGI takes center stage that the film becomes halfway decent, particularly when Galactus arrives to devour the Earth, ironically, the sequence that could potentially piss off countless fanboys with its depiction of the Jack Kirby planet-eater as a roiling cloud.
With visual effects by Weta, The Orphanage, and a handful of other effects houses, the spectacle is certainly not too shabby. But without any honest emotional underpinnings and real characters, the film cannot generate any genuine tension and is grossly unsuccessful in involving its audience in its story. Without characters to truly care for, all we’ve got here that merits any sort of attention are pixels; pixels that are sure pretty to look at, but certainly not pixels worth any sort of emotional investment.
Did it look impressive? At times, it actually did.
Did I feel for once that there was any real danger, that the Earth stood on the brink of total destruction, and that all life as we know it was in jeopardy?
Certainly not.

If there is any triumph to be found here, it’s that director Tim Story managed to deliver a better film than the sad-a$$ original. (At the very least, Story’s got a better track record than Mark Steven Johnson. Already guilty of inflicting Daredevil upon us, Johnson outdid himself with the horrible Ghost Rider; review in Archive March 2007.)
But it’s a hollow victory, as FF:RotSS is nowhere near being a good comic book film adaptation; it’s the kind of comic book film where the heroes still have time to do some goofy skywriting even as Venice is sinking into the sea.
It’s all ultimately very inconsequential and disposable, like a planet that’s had the life sucked out of it by Galactus. And where’s the fun in taking an hour-and-a-half long round through lifeless territory?

* The other thing that’s different about Marvel’s current crop of stinkers is that a lot of them are making money. Ghost Rider is actually the 13th biggest film of the year at the moment, with a total gross of $115, 802, 596. FF:RotSS is 10th, with $128,879,368! (And these are just the domestic figures for the U.S. box office.)

(Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer OS courtesy of kinopoisk.ru.)

BOBBY (Review)

Spending detention in a library with Molly Ringwald and stalking Andie MacDowell. Oh, and starring in what is largely considered the worst Stephen King-related film of all.
Certainly a far cry from that to writing and directing an ambitious film like Bobby. But somehow, Emilio Estevez has managed to bridge that considerable distance.

"Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation ... It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

It’s the 4th of June, 1968, and in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (where the Campaign Headquarters of Senator Robert F. Kennedy is located), a host of individuals converge on the fateful day that the course of a nation, and perhaps even the world, was dictated by an assassin’s bullet.
In a country wracked by social turmoil and civil unrest, Robert F. Kennedy was a beacon of hope, a grand statesman and popular humanist, who was largely considered the best and brightest hope to unite America, and to save it from an unpopular war.
Estevez uses the events of that final day as a pivot point around which to weave a tapestry of disparate lives united not just by the sharing of this tragedy, but by the simple fact of their common humanity.

And portraying this section of humanity is an assemblage of some of film’s most talented thespians, from the older generation—Sir Anthony Hopkins (also one of Bobby’s producers) and Martin Sheen (ain’t nepotism grand?)—to the younger set—Elijah Wood and Shia LaBeouf (who is set to explode in Michael Bay’s Transformers)—and spiced up with some Demi Moore (fellow Brat Packer, to whom he was once engaged, back in the day).
The ensemble meets expectations admirably, infusing their characters with honesty and humanity, a joint effort which earned Bobby a nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Arguably though, the weak link here could very well be Mr. Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher. His drug dealer, Fisher, doesn’t really seem anything more than Kutcher in hippie drag. But part of that problem could be traced to Estevez’s script.

In presenting us with 23 characters, Estevez could very well have stretched the Grand Hotel template a tad thin in certain places, leading one to question the relative importance of certain plot threads and characters to the film’s theme of hope in the face of turmoil. Aside from Kutcher’s drug dealer (whose presence also precipitates the bizarre acid trip Kennedy volunteers LaBeouf and Brian Geraghty go on), Sheen and Helen Hunt’s socialite couple are also problematic, as is Moore (unless doing a cover of “Louie Louie” is a valid enough excuse to have her in the movie), and even Hopkins, to a certain extent. And please, keep in mind that I’m not questioning the performances, but rather, whether we could have done without some of these characters.

With this many characters and this much going on, it’s unavoidable that some plot threads will be more important and more integral than others. Some, like the young husband- and bride-to-be (Wood and Lindsay Lohan) and several of the hotel employees (particularly Freddy Rodriguez’s busboy and Laurence Fishburne’s chef) serve to give voice to particular issues of the time, or to underscore some of the values and beliefs that Kennedy stood for, and these are the ones that clearly belong in this movie. Others though (some of which I’ve mentioned above) are on shaky ground.
If Estevez had shaved off some of the characters, then there might have been more screen time that he could have devoted to bolster some of the roles that seem iffy; Kutcher serves to typify both the drug and the hippie cultures, so the presence of his character could be justified, but as it is, he’s more a plot device to get LaBeouf and Geraghty high than a flesh and blood character.
Hopkins’ retired doorman also could have used some beefing up. This sort of character, who is acutely aware of the history of the story’s setting, could have been a far more valuable asset to the narrative than he turns out to be.

If there is a weakness to Estevez’s script, I feel it is this, and not, as some people may point out, its historical accuracy.
Yes, the bystanders wounded in the assassination in Bobby are fictional and not the actual victims. And yes, there is also no suggestion of any conspiracy pertaining to the assassination.
But this is not JFK. This is not that sort of film.
This is, instead, a film about the everyday kindnesses (the “… numberless diverse acts of courage and belief”) and the casual cruelties that make up the history of our lives as a race and as a people. It is about hope, about its resiliency and fragility.

Is there more to the story of Robert F. Kennedy? Of course, although I feel it would be more accurate to say there are other stories to tell of Robert F. Kennedy.
Estevez chose to tell one about everyday people and how a figure like Kennedy—already mythic, even in life—could impact and influence their lives, and that is just as valid as a story about destroyed evidence and mystery gunmen.
Estevez chose this tale, and for the most part, succeeded in the telling. Surely that is something worth celebrating.

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not."

(Quotes in italics from speeches by Robert F. Kennedy.)