Everything I Consume: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

I love the Fantastic Four. If I was ever geeky enough to compose a list of my favorite fictional characters they and most of their supporting characters would be on it (#3: The Thing, #11: Mr. Fantastic, #15: Invisible Girl/Woman, #18: Alicia Masters, #26: Pogo Plane). One of my prized possessions is my Marvel Masterworks of the Lee/Kirby FFs of the 1960s. My daughter, Gwen discovered them and now I read her FF stories every night. The other day she made "Submariner lips" for The Wife. I have no idea what she was talking about but I'm very, very, proud of her; I'm even more proud than when she learned all that Passover stuff at pre-school.

Our movie-going evening started poorly as the movie we really wanted to see, Knocked Up was sold out. When you make fun of buying 10:30 tickets for a movie online you're gonna get sold out. That left us with a choice between FF:RotSS and Nancy Drew. My childhood heroes won out over The Wife's childhood heroine.

So, it was with some trepidation I went to see FF:RotSS; the reviews were pretty bad. But I liked the movie once I got over the fact it was made for ten-year olds. It was good clean fun, kept the spirit of the comic and came in at about an hour and a half. The movie was like a good heist, "You go in, you go out, nobody gets hurt." It kind of reminded me of the 60s FFs except without the snappy dialogue, Jack Kirby art and heavy handed symbolism. However, a few things items in the motion picture bothered me.

Twice in this movie The Thing reverts to Ben Grimm which was common in the old stories but here comes across as a shallow attempt to show the Michael Chiklis's face to the audience like the dream sequence in Ray where we got to see Jamie Foxx without sunglasses.

It bothered me that Jessica Alba had blond hair to play Invisible Woman but they didn't change the hair for the actors playing Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch. In this case, I think I'm the one with the problem.

Another thing I didn't like was the Invisible Woman's obsession over her wedding in the face of global destruction. I thought it was sexist but The Wife didn't have a problem with it so either it's not sexist or I was really, really uninvolved during my wedding planning.

On the subject of weddings, the dock I was married on has now tumbled into the sea and that big factory across the street with the trolley's is now a Fairway.