Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Allrighty. This might burn any credibility I may have gained with all you readers, but I have to admit; I enjoyed the first Fantastic Four. The sequel? Yup, I liked it too. For me, the key to enjoying the FF franchise is that these are not meant to be your typical big budget super hero flicks a la Spider Man, Batman, etc. For this group, it’s best to take these movies in as a light popcorn action romp aimed more at the youngin’s as opposed to mom and dad. There’s nothing too dark here, there’s nothing to violent. You have four people with various powers and they beat up bad guys. It really doesn’t get any deeper than that. I’d have to say they boil the comic book movie down to it’s purest form, aiming to be as close to a comic book as possible, as opposed to bringing the characters into real life. With all of that out of the way, the Silver Surfer ramped this flick up a notch above the other giving us a new hero that was pretty cool to watch, and a bad mother trucker to boot. There are two things I really didn’t like. The biggest thing? The Mr. Fantastic bachelor party dance scene was down right embarrassing to watch. We all know the guy’s stretchy, you don’t need to cram it down our throat. On top of that, you could almost feel Ioan Gruffudd’s embarrassment doing the scene. The other thing, which I have to give some leeway since the original pink and blue clad bad guy would be near impossible to pull of on the big screen, is turning Galactus into a storm cloud.
Continuing on my credibility burning crusade here comes Underdog. Yes, I hate to say; I enjoyed it. Having grown up watching the crap out of this cartoon on PBS, there is a heavy fan boy slant in this opinion. Regardless, they managed to capture the spirit in live action and tweak the story enough to make it fun. It’s not going to win any awards, but those of you my age with kids, this is a good way to introduce them to something you grew up loving. Judging from the way my daughter talked for the rest of the evening, this one’s a pretty sure fire hit with the kiddo’s. My favorite part bar none is the bungling duo of Simon Barsinister and Kad. Played by Peter Dinklage and Patrick Wharburton respectively, both combined to bring this sinister pair to life. Really, I thought Dinklage was great as Barsinister and made the flick. His inflections, his appearance, his mad scientist schtick, this guy makes a good bad guy. (Even if he was toned down for the kids flick) Jason Lee as the voice of Underdog? He doesn’t pull off the same feel as the original, but he works well enough to get you into the character.
All that said? The new version of the theme song kicks ass. It’s been stuck in my head since we left the theater yesterday.
There’s really nothing new here aside from a few swear words and Bart’s junk. Homer screws up, people get mad at him, Bart cracks wise, they eventually clean up the screw up, everybody lives happily ever after. Feeling much like a long episode of the long standing TV series, there is still some benefit to the big screen version. While many will agree that the series has gone downhill over the last several years, Simpsons The Movie retreats back to the earlier days when the writing was solid and feels like the good old days once again. There are some great laughs here and some great Homer antics. Just don’t go expecting them to reinvent the wheel.
So there you have it folks, a decidedly horror free roundup, still with a healthy side of cheese. (That is, unless you consider my actually liking Fantastic Four and Underdog horrific)
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