Cast: Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richard’s, Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm,Laurence Fishburne as Silver Surfer, Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom, Kerry Washington as Alicia, Andre Braugher as General Hager, Doug Jones as Silver Surfer, featuring a guest appearance from Stan lee, and a random appearance by Lauren Sanchez. Yes, that Lauren Sanchez.

Written By: Don Payne (My Super Ex Girlfriend), Mark Frost (Fantastic Four), John Turman (Fantastic Four), based on characters created by Stan Lee

directed By: Tim Story (Ride Along)

Notable Producers: Avi Arad, Chris Columbus, Stan lee, Kevin Feige

Original Score by: John Ottman (Fantastic Four)

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Release Year: 2007

Rated PG

Runtime: 92 minutes

Audio description produced By: Deluxe

Written by:

Narrated By: Jedidiah Barton

What is it?: A sequel that brings back the original gang, and sets them up against the cosmic force of the Silver surfer (Laurence Fishburne/Doug Jones) , who arrives at a planet eight days before an even bigger danger destroys it. Can the Fantastic Four stop the biggest foe they’ve faced, and likely ever will face, or did the movie run out of money, and replace their biggest foe with the return of Doctor Doom?

What Works: Not much. Seemingly struggling to figure out how to pace itself, the only strength is casting. Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis were great the first time, and remain so on the second go around. Kerry Washington has a different set of scenes, and is less offensive, and actually nice to have as a female dynamic with Sue. Even Julian McMahon, who shouldn’t be in the movie, is fine as Doom, but they needed to do something else.laurence Fishburne’s voice is caked in wisdom, and he brings that to the ethereal Silver surfer, taking a strong and silent type. Braugher is good, but is kind of wasted here.

What Doesn’t Work: things that didn’t work before, still don’t. Ioan and Jessica still aren’t the best choices, but the film is collapsed by a lack of identity. it can’t decide who the villain is, and for a film with a 92 minute runtime, it ends up just clobbering the script.it takes a minute for Silver Surver to arrive, and we invest quite a bit of time in the wedding of Reed and Sue, including an uncomfortable bachelor party, and some really obvious and stupid jokes. then, the Surfer arrives, and he starts to dominate the film, but we have to make space for Doom to come back,and do the exact same bullshit all over again. It would have been fine if he was under some weird amnesia, and earnestly wanted to help, or even was still evil, but realized there was a greater threat (like Magneto does in X2). Nope. Doom just steals a movie called rise Of The Silver Surfer, and strangleholds it so much that Galactus is barely in the thing at all. It is almost like they ran out of money to actually do the VFX for Galactus,and had only a few frames at the end to defeat him. Galactus is so overpowered, so strong, that he makes for a compelling Thanos level villain. first Steps recognizes this, and gives him space. this does not. They also do a really poor job of explaining why Galactus needs a herald, which first steps does go into.

Truly, I want to like this, because I did enjoy the first. But, this one is just all over the place, and it did not age as well. It’s nice to see Julian McMahon and Andre Braugher, but it would also be nice if it felt like they helped the script, rather than have character development that hinders the script. And, johnny is given a wooden female military officer as a love interest, and her development is so bad, i forgot her name, and couldn’t figure out who it was on IMDb. Deeply unmemorable.

the audio Description: However, Deluxe plus Jedidiah Barton. And, this film has some cool visuals. yes, the Surfer going through the building looked fake back in the day, but it also looked theoretically cool. It reminded me of when neo lands on the ground in the Matrix, and he starts to go through the ground and comes back up. It’s cool, but really fake. Barton a deluxe nail everything I could remember,including some specifics about Doom’s appearance, and a solid attempt at describing this benign version of Galactus.

Why you Might Like it: You’re a super fan of someone in the cast, or you really really loved the first film.

Why you Might Not Like it: it’s a hot mess. It never has a real identity, and instead tries to do too much. it’s the same failure that killed Sam Raimi’s third Spider-Man film. Who is the bad guy? just because you can include multiple villains, and you believe you can juggle them, doesn’t make it true. In almost every case, a film successfully balances two.Two great villains. Any more than that, and something suffers. Here, Galactus suffers, when it should have been Doom.

Final Thoughts: The rise of The Silver Surfer is also the fall of the Fantastic Four.

Rotten: Final Grade: 4.7/10