Written by: Susan Granger
www.susangranger.com

As I was leaving the theater, someone behind me muttered, "It's a fantastic snore!" Another decreed, "A colossal bore!" They weren't wrong. Except for the "12 year-old boy" audience for whom it's intended, this latest comic book fantasy doesn't transcend the genre, particularly when compared with "Batman Begins" and "Spider-Man," even "X-Men" and "The Hulk."

The Fantastic Four were created in 1961 by Marvel Comics writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby in response to the Justice League, a superhero team from rival DC Comics. As the story goes, four friends are zapped by radiation during a cosmic storm in space. Their altered DNA gives them "special powers" and they evolve into the stretchable Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd), the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), the Human Torch (Chris Evans) and the hulking Thing (Michael Chiklis). A fifth space traveler, the billionaire industrialist Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) from the fictional Latveria in Eastern Europe, becomes their evil nemesis.

Director Tim Story ("Barbershop," "Taxi") and screenwriters Michael France and Mark Frost forget about struggle and pathos, even believability, saddling the bickering quartet with the perils of "sudden celebrity" and bland issues about how much attention these fatuous, often reluctant superheroes should draw to themselves, plus a tepid love triangle. The underwritten dialogue is silly, corny and - well - juvenile. Worse yet, the hackneyed special effects are neither particularly impressive nor convincing.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Fantastic Four" is a frustrating, flimsy 3. Lacking any coherent vision, of all the recent movies derived from comic books, this is among the weakest, along with "Catwoman," "Elektra" and "The Punisher."

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