Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Tim Story makes room for a superhero adventure that is cheerful, brief and largely free of solemnity. We welcome that, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is modestly entertaining whenever it gives its strange new arrival some attention. But the four leads remain too thinly written to make the danger matter, while the jokes cannot consistently make up the difference. At 92 minutes, it is easy enough to finish and difficult to recommend.

Chris Evans finds some comic energy in Johnny Storm, while Michael Chiklis gives Ben Grimm a warmth the writing could use more of. Ioan Gruffudd’s Reed Richards and Jessica Alba’s Sue Richards are harder to care about, though that is largely a problem on the page. Don Payne and Mark Frost’s screenplay supplies quips more readily than revealing responses. Without those, the banter becomes something to sit through between action scenes, however willing the actors.

The Silver Surfer changes that for a while. We felt a small rush of excitement at his arrival, because the animation gives him an assurance and strangeness missing from much of the surrounding film. Doug Jones plays him, with Laurence Fishburne supplying the voice, and the character holds our attention without the script constantly insisting that he should. His presence makes the uneven effects elsewhere harder to ignore, particularly when the human characters already need all the help they can get.

Larry Blanford’s cinematography makes the action easy to follow without giving it much force. William Hoy and Peter S. Elliot’s editing keeps the adventure brisk enough for its younger audience, but the dramatic moments need more room than the cutting allows. A short running time is welcome; it does not automatically make a film feel well paced. The action offers occasional ingenuity, then the dialogue returns and the energy begins to drain as we wait for another sequence to get moving.

Kirk M. Petruccelli’s production design is less memorable than the visitor passing through it, which leaves the film unusually dependent on a single animated figure. John Ottman’s music adds energy without making the danger feel particularly urgent. Both departments help sustain the cheerful adventure, but neither can supply the interest missing from the characters. The lighter tone is still a virtue: superhero adventures can bear a certain amount of silliness, and the director is sensible enough not to apologise for it.

Julian McMahon’s Victor Von Doom is the clearest disappointment, an unconvincing villain in a film that already struggles to establish anything worth worrying about. For an adventure with such a light touch, he is a dispiritingly ordinary obstacle. The screenplay never makes him interesting enough to justify the attention he takes from the Surfer. This is where the film most needs some invention, and Tim Story’s otherwise useful straightforwardness begins to look like a limitation. If the Silver Surfer is not already a particular interest, we would choose another adventure.