The Fantastic Four (1994)

You won't be disappointed!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's Marvel was selling the rights to it's characters to virtually anyone. The rights to Marvel's first family fell into the hands of schlockmeister extraordinary Roger Corman (I mean that in a nice way). The result: A 12$ budget doesn't work. The Think looked alright, but the rest of the FF is mostly animated - especially the Torch. Put your hands over your mouth and speak - that's the Thing and Doctor Doom (who at least looked far better than he did in either of the other movies). But overall this is a tedious exercise in how to make a crappy movie. It's as bad as the Captain America's of the 1970's and 1990's.

This film has a crazy history, but if you put that aside and judge it as a superhero film made on a budget it is great. This movie comes from a time before superhero films had budgets over $100,000,000 and back when comic books were still aimed primarily at kids. It's a simple origin story that stays pretty true to the comic book. The FX can be kind of goofy (except for The Thing, which overall looks awesome). The acting is solid as is the directing, music, and script. If you're a jerk and like belittling cheap genre movies, then you'll probably have a field day with this movie since it literally had 1/100th the budget of modern comic-book films...but I think it's entertaining and fun. The folks who made it did a good job.

The Fantastic Four (1994) * 1/2 (out of 4) Early Marvel adaptation about a group of astronauts who are struck with cosmic rays, which turns them into the title characters. Pretty soon the superheroes have to battle Dr. Doom.THE FANTASTIC FOUR has become quite the legendary picture because Roger Corman basically agreed to make it but then the film was never released. There are countless documents out there about why the movie was never released but it would be best for you to watch the recent documentary DOOMED: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ROGER CORMAN'S THE FINAL FOUR. That documentary features interviews with the cast and crew and really gives one a great understanding of what happened with this film.Obvously, having now seen this version, the biggest problem is that they were trying to make a high-budget movie with a very small budget. Whenever you do that it's going to be obvious when things are hampered because of the lack of money. This here really comes across as a bunch of people getting together without the means of making a high-budget movie and they just do whatever it takes to get the job done. The problem is that the entire cheap look just makes the film seem more silly than anything else. It's almost like a made up movie so to speak. Having seen the documentary and knowing what happened, I really feel bad for the cast and crew.I'm really not sure who would enjoy this movie on its own terms. The history behind the film has made it a cult item and on that level it is slightly entertaining to watch. If you're familiar with what happened behind-the-scenes then it's interesting to watch everything play out in front of your eyes. The only problem is that it's just not entertaining or silly enough to work as camp.

Off course it is not a good film, but it is far from the catastrophe I expected about a movie famous for being created not to be released (although the actors did not know that).Is it naive and simplistic, but not more than many films that have a much higher budget and are seen in theaters. Victor Von Doom is really ridiculous, so are some romantic scenes, but not all the film is as bad.The Thing is visually nice, the special effects are campy but not disgusting, the Jeweler is somewhat a representative of a kind of villain which belonged to the previous decade (to the 80's). Not that important, but I'd also shall mention that Susan Storm here (Rebecca Staab) is more beautiful than Jessica Alba (when they are not invisible...).