Fantastic Four would weigh in as a featherweight, feather-headed flick, and a low point in the current wave of comic-book adaptations.

Less a movie than an anecdotal collection of slapstick action, Fantastic Four carries the silliness to such a degree you practically expect campy flashes of "Thwap!'' and "Kapow!'' a la the 1960s "Batman'' TV show.

Fantastic Four starts at the beginning, explaining how four astronauts encountered a nasty space storm whose radiation turned them into a merry band of mutants.

Dr. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), a weeny egghead who has to go begging arrogant old school chum Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) to back an expedition to study the storm, is turned into human Silly Putty, able to stretch and contort his body any way he wants.

Reed's former squeeze Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), now Von Doom's girlfriend, finds she can turn invisible and create force fields.

Her brother, Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), gains the power to fly and engulf himself in flames. Reed's buddy Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) is transformed into a rocklike hulk with amazing strength.

Unlike the usual superhero alter egos, the Fantastic Four identities and powers become widely known after a public spectacle of heroics on the Brooklyn Bridge.

In the media, Fantastic Four Reed becomes known as Mr. Fantastic, Sue the Invisible Woman, Johnny the Human Torch, and Ben the Thing.

Meantime, Victor has been quietly mutating himself, taking on metallic and electromagnetic properties that make him the virtually indestructible megalomaniac Dr. Doom, whose first order of business is to eliminate the Fantastic Four.

The Fantastic Four end is happy and quite obvious. The screenplay by Mark Frost and Michael France presents a miserly little personal battle between the good guys and Doom, leaving no sense that anything is at stake other than these sideshow freaks themselves.

Tim Story, who made an admirable debut with "Barbershop'' but followed with last year's feeble action comedy "Taxi,'' was a curious choice to direct Fantastic Four. Even far more elaborate stunt sequences in Fantastic Four look choppy and ill-defined.

The visual effects in Fantastic Four look old-fashioned, too. Again, the movie suffers from comparisons to "The Incredibles,'' which had the benefit of being a real cartoon, its heroes' abilities wilder yet still more believable because of their animated context.

Basically, Fantastic Four spent much of the movie squabbling like a family in group therapy gone horribly wrong, begging the question, are these superheroes more trouble than they're worth?


Arjun Varma, sased on AP reports. 

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