Review – Fant4stic

One of the worst things to watch as a film critic is a gifted cast wasted in a terrible movie.  With films like Ocean’s 12 (2004), All the King’s Men (2006), Bobby (2006), and Movie 43 (2013), studios put together an all-star, awards caliber team and put them into a movie that is either underwhelming or just awful.

However, Josh Trank’s Fant4stic might be the biggest culprit of this travesty, as Fant4stic is a cinematic debacle that takes some of the most talented young actors working today and throws them into a dumb, rushed, disappointing film.

The third and newest adaptation of the Fant4stic comic book is yet another basic origin story that we have all seen before.  Miles Teller stars as boy genius Reed Richards.  After creating a dimension jumping machine with his best friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), Richards is recruited by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara) to join a dimension project at the Baxter Foundation.  After a breakthrough in the project, Reed, along with Ben, Sue’s brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), and fellow scientist Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) all travel to an alternate universe, where, after brief exploration, they realize it is not safe and attempt to leave immediately.  During the escape, Doom is left behind, while the other three teleport back, bringing a giant radiation wave that effects all of them, including Sue, in different ways and gives them all super powers.  The government gets a hold of them and wants to use the kids and their powers to help America.  A lazy “One Year Later” transition happens and it is just straight chaos from there, as we fly through the team learning their powers, traveling back to the other dimension, finding Dr. Doom, Doom coming back to earth and reeking havoc, the kids fighting Doom and winning (not a spoiler if you’ve seen any comic book origin story ever).

I will admit, I was enjoying this movie at the beginning. The story, though an origin story, was slightly different than what we had seen before and the cast was very charismatic.  However, it seemed that after the kids got their powers, everyone who was part of the movie realized how terrible and stupid the second act was, because it was incredibly rushed and disappointing. There is a lot of stuff happening in such a short period of time at the end, and because of this, I forgot why I liked these kids and the story in the first place and instead was thrown into a tizzy with everything that was happening.

I’m not going to speak on the cast because they are all incredibly talented and tried their best with the garbage material.  They will all get past this and make great movies.

What does concern me about this film is the talent of director Josh Trank.  Trank’s debut film Chronicle (2012) was an exhilarating and original super hero movie, and showed promise for the young director. But, with this movie, his recent firing from directing one of the Star Wars sequels, and his rumored antics on set, I worry about his future and talent and think that he may be another one hit wonder.

Of all the Fant4stic films that have been made, this is by far the worst. This movie had all the makings to be great. It had an amazing young cast, an up and coming director, and a franchise that needed saving. But instead, we get two hours of wasted talent and a colossal disappointment. Fant4stic is one of the very worst movies of the year and one of the worst comic book movies of all-time.

MY RATING – 1.5/4

Did you see Fant4stic?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter @kevflix or on Facebook at Kevflix.