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I probably saw Rise of the Silver Surfer from a different perspective compared to most viewers - I liked the first Fantastic Four. Most, I expect, will see the sequel in the hope that it somehow redeems the first film, which was a critical disaster and one of the most maligned Marvel adaptations ever. My view was that it was a fun family flick that accepted and revelled in its lightweight superficiality.
As shown by the impressive trailers, FF: ROTSS aims for a much bigger scale than its predecessor, and that is indeed welcome. The events of the narrative span the globe, from Japan to London to Egypt and so on. The increased ambition is one of the film's strengths but also leads to one of its faults: it jumps around so much that it never finds its groove, and also the characters seem to traverse the globe in extremely short time spans. The antagonistic interplay between the central four is still as prevalent as it was earlier, but the attempts at humour come off as strained and generally fail to elicit many laughs. Chris Evans' Johnny Storm/The Human Torch is still the most entertaining of the bunch with the best powers, but even he this time struggles with the material somewhat, while the first film's other major success, Michael Chiklis (as Ben Grimm/The Thing), is relegated to the level of bumbling comic relief. Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd is endearing, if unremarkable, as leader and science boffin Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, but the rather questionable acting talents of Jessica Alba (Susan Storm/The Invisible Woman) are brought painfully into focus as her distractingly fake blue contact lenses mean that she can't just rely on her looks this time.
But we all came to see the main man of the title, the Silver Surfer himself, right? So is he worth it? My answer would be a resounding... sort of. He's cool, all right, and Johnny Storm's aerial pursuit of him is one of the better action scenes (and one which is almost entirely shown in the teaser trailer), but he never quite satisfies as a visual effect. The character's appearance recalls the T-1000 from 1991's Terminator 2 and frankly the CGI doesn't seem like a massive leap forward from that cinematic milestone. In terms of motion he works well but he never quite looks tangible, always retaining a plasticy, artificial look. The lip-synching to Laurence Fishburne's voice is also erratic. Many people complain about the computer game-like look of today's blockbusters, and in this instance the criticism is well founded; the action scenes generally look like they belong on an Xbox 360. In particular, the depiction of Reed Richards' ability to stretch his body never threatens to even approach the level of convincing. It all presumably comes down to the issue of cost - ROTSS has a substantially lower budget than mega-blockbusters like Pirates or Spider-Man 3 and can't compete in terms of production values.
What budget should have little bearing on is the quality of the script but the film falls short here too. The lack of a real story was forgivable first time round as that instalment was focused on the origin and establishing a franchise. Here it becomes a problem because without a built-in narrative arc the film just becomes a procession of bombastic but not hugely exciting action scenes. Some ideas worked well - Johnny's newfound ability to swap powers provided some cheap laughs for a couple of minutes, and the constant changing of locations added some variety. Another positive for me was that Galactus, the devourer of worlds and the main driving force behind the events of the film, was one of the few aspects of the film that moderately impressed, despite the fact that he/it does take the form of a rather threatening cloud as had been rumoured.
The summary
Rise of the Silver Surfer is fun in places, but relies too much on dodgy CGI to cover up its lack of a story and narrative momentum. The scale may be more ambitious but the directing isn't, rendering the tale flat and undramatic.
