E-Mail This Article to a Friend FANTASTIC FOUR

Tim Story’s screen adaptation of the Marvel comic is cheesy in production values; it’s the clash of personalities that makes the film in any way fantastic. The Four get their superpowers when a space mission financed by megalomaniac tycoon Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) goes awry. Von Doom and rubber man Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) are former MIT classmates, and Victor’s got a thing for Sue/The Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), who used to date Reed. That’s one source of tension; another is the sibling rivalry between Sue and her brother Johnny/The Human Torch (Chris Evans), but it’s the I-just-want-to-be-loved woes of Ben Grimm/The Thing (Michael Chiklis) that endear — his wife, not taking to his new physique, rejects him, and his fingers are too big to pick her wedding band off the tarmac. Story (Barbershop and Taxi) keeps the pacing taut, restraining the derring-do and FX until Von Doom unleashes his electro-magnetic rays on midtown Manhattan.