A lot of people would say that the Fantastic Four movie resembles Disney/Pixar’s Incredibles but in reality Incredibles was the one who used the original FF as source material in integrating the core concept into film. The “Family” integration with the superhero genre was first conceived into the Fantastic Four with Reed Richards who married Susan Storm whose brother is Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm with no relation except as your resident grumpy uncle to Franklin Richards (son of Reed & Sue).

In the comic book, our story begin with Reed Richards, a scientist who hijack a Pogo Plane with his best friend Ben Grimm, a test pilot along with Sue Storm and his brother Johnny Storm. All went into space and was doused with cosmic radiation and thus was given unique powers. Dr. Victor Von Doom on the other hand appeared few issues later but with some back-story that he used to be Reed’s college friend and competitor. He was a practitioner of both magic and science and in this way learned the best of both worlds in his goal for world domination.

The movie has changed a lot like how Sue and Johnny Storm accompanied Reed and Ben into space. Dr. Doom gaining powers (sort of Colossus + Electro) and other nuances that normally you won’t find in any FF comic book. I like the movie especially since they tried to be faithful to the original source material but making it believable if the Fantastic Four would exist today right now. Plus other stuff like Thing saying “Its Clobbering Time!” and Human Torch’s “Flame On!” If you guys are wondering who is Stan Lee (he did made a lot of cameo for most Marvel films) you can find him here as Willy Lumpkin, the mailman.

Now on to the character analysis:

Jessica Alba as Invisible Woman was wonderful. Lot of FF fans frowned when she was cast as Sue Storm thinking they wanted a blonde bombshell to boot, but when you watched this movie you would surely like her. The role almost went to Kate Bosworth, Rachel McAdams (the Notebook), Scarlett Johannson and even Julia Stiles

Michael Chiklis (the Shield) as the Thing is barnone no other. It’s the VOICE.

Chris Evans as the Human Torch is really downright funny and the way he portray Torch makes it really cool.

Ioan Gruffudd (Lancelot in King Arthur) as Mr. Fantastic was ok even when you watch the movie that he looks awfully dry but that was the character he was supposed to portray a person that shows no emotion whatsoever. The role actually was pegged for George Clooney.

Julian McMahon as Dr. Doom was actually good, but the bad thing about it is that his arms turned into metal and shoot electrical burst from his hands. The comic book shows that he uses a gauntlet equip with laser or electrical burst. Now Electro needs to be scrap out from the Spider-Man movies.

Overall, the movie we all been waiting is finally here. The effects are done magnificently and character development was great. If you want to be entertained then this is the movie for you and for everyone else who is young at heart. I guarantee you would like it as long as you don’t expect too much except to enjoy and not criticize every detail.

I have a good background with the characters since I used to read them when I was a kid and now my children’s turn to actually see them in the big screen. Before watching they asked me who the characters are and what are their powers. Then they said that is so lame, they copy from the Incredibles. To get things straight the Incredibles are the one who copy from the Fantastic Four, that is what I said.

Then off to the movie as the screen rolls we get to see the statue of Victor Von Doom being remodeled by a machinist, as Reed and Ben stand there in awe over the magnificent building of Von Doom Corporation. Next it’s all chatter and my children becomes restless. Finally some action begin when the FF are in the space station and being hit by the cosmic rays.

Later the movie revealed the powers of our characters from the Invisible Woman to Mr. Fantastic, but they really like Human Torch and said he was so cool. They really don’t understand what’s up with Dr. Doom’s financial problems or even what are his actual powers, but one thing they know is that he is the bad guy.

They really felt pity for the Thing and understand his problem of trying to look human rather than the monstrous being he has become. They even ask me, “Daddy why are other people so mean to him?”

Finally, we get to see the final battle between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom in the streets of New York with such spectacular special effects. They cheered when Doom was finally defeated but have no idea how he was defeated. How do you expect children to understand basic Chemistry 101, even if I have no idea what they are?

After the movie, they wanted to buy Fantastic Four merchandise like action figures. I don’t know how Hollywood movies do it, but they can surely hypnotize your kids in buying things. Perhaps there is a subliminal messages like “buy me, buy me” Overall I really like the movie and pays tribute to the comic book, but what is important the kids love it and that is worth the price you paid.

They will also be happy to learn that those characters and their diabolical nemesis Dr. Doom are written and played in the movie pretty much as sprung from the minds of Marvel's Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; that the special effects are suitably astonishing; and that the producers seem to have lavished every technological miracle available on this show.

But does that really make it a good movie?

As directed by Tim Story ("Barbershop"), it's pretty entertaining: fast, slick, spectacular and full of wisecracks and inside gags, in the manner of "Fantastic Four" co-creator Lee's scripts for the early '60s comic books. It certainly looks stunning, and there's even a try at injecting some human drama and strong emotion into the action stew, two ingredients that made "Spider-Man 2" soar.

Sometimes, though, you need more than love and money—or even love, money and talent. Though "Fantastic Four" seems to have almost everything going for it at the start, Story and his writers—ex-David Lynch collaborator Mark Frost ("Twin Peaks") and Michael France ("Cliffhanger")—seem to be missing something vital by the end.

There is, or should, be, an epic quality here, mixed with Lee's trademark playful impudence. And, in the beginning, it seems there will be. Like "Batman Begins," or the first "Superman" movie, "Fantastic Four" is an origin story, explaining how five exceptional but relatively normal and un-super human beings turned into a collection of super-heroes and one super-heavy.

With painstaking care and detail, we're shown how brilliant scientist-inventor Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) became the supremely stretchable Mr. Fantastic; how Fantastic's one-time inamorata Sue Storm became the now-you-see-her, now-you-don't Invisible Woman; how Sue's wiseacre, girl-chasing younger brother Johnny became the red-hot flying Human Torch; how gentle giant Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) became morose walking brick pile The Thing; and how greed-crazed corporate bully Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), Sue's new fella, became the metallic, maniacal Dr. Doom.

It all happened in outer space, where the five were involved in an exploratory flight to a cosmic storm, which turned ugly when storm clouds unexpectedly swamped them and scrambled all their DNA, turning them into rubbery, invisible, torchy or monstrous super-creatures. Afterwards, the Four, accepting it all mostly with an impressive "c'est la vie" attitude, get together to live at Richards'/Fantastic's lab in sometimes contentious camaraderie, while giving the city the benefit of their good-hearted super-talents. Von Doom by contrast, goes ballistic when he starts turning into Dr. Doom: a irredeemable villain without alibis—and increasingly, without flesh on his face.

Soon, the Fan 4 and Doc Doom are headed for what The Thing calls "Clobbering Time"—and along the way they turn the city (Vancouver and North Vancouver, disguised as New York) into a wrecker's playground, bashing and thrashing each other, creating nearly fatal traffic jams and generally wreaking havoc. Along the way, Fantastic stays elastic, Invisible Woman returns some of the old erotic magic to brassieres, The Torch sizzles, The Thing clobbers and mopes and Doc Doom winds up looking like a road-show Darth Vader.

Screenwriter Frost says he wanted to catch the comic's bubbly quality and director Story has been good at comedy, but the movie still seems swamped by the effects. It's not light-hearted in the way they intend—and some of the performances (Gruffudd's, for example) are almost too straight-faced and serious. The best acting, by Chiklis ("Wired" and TV's "The Shield") as The Thing, benefits greatly from the fact that he's the one Four guy who doesn't depend on computer-generated effects. He's transformed the old-fashioned way, with special effects makeup and costuming. Chiklis gives the film some emotional weight.

But "Fantastic Four" tends to disappear from your mind afterwards almost as fast as Invisible Woman vanishes in plain sight. It's the movie you expect but that's not necessarily the best result. (By contrast, "Spider-Man 2" gave you more than you expected.) There's something too heavy about the jokes and the style, too obvious about the action—even in a big fancy set-piece like the Torch snowboarding down a snowy and soon-melting mountainside.

Comic monolith Marvel has had a hit-or-miss record with recent adaptations, making something truly marvelous with the two "Spider-Man" pictures and scoring with the second "X-Men," but stumbling into camp, formula and even drivel with "Daredevil" and "Elektra." "Fantastic Four" falls somewhere in between. I don't think it will seriously disappoint longtime fans, but it made me itchy as I watched it unfold in ways that the comics never did when I read them in the '60s. All too often, it's clobbering time—and eventually, you want to clobber back.

Given the sheer number of screenwriters and directors who have come and gone along the way, the comic book-to-motion picture journey taken by "Fantastic Four" has been fraught with enough obstacles to make that DNA-altering cosmic radiation storm encountered by the Marvel superheroes look like a gentle breeze by comparison.

Now, 44 years after the quartet made its comic book debut, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing arrive on the big screen courtesy of a script officially credited to Mark Frost and Michael France, direction by Tim Story and about 800 visual effects shots.

And the end result?

"Fantastic Four's" a colossal snore.

After all the fussing and fidgeting exerted in trying to nail just the right mix of comic book action, comedy and pathos, the movie emerges as a tone-deaf mishmash of underdeveloped characters, half-baked humor and unhatched plotting drenched in CGI overkill.

Boxofficewise, the 20th Century Fox release probably will be an improvement over the considerably less-than-Marvel-ous welcome afforded "Elektra" and "The Punisher," but there's an overriding '90s syndicated TV look and feel to this shot-in-Vancouver production that could have the core comic book geek contingent voting to hold out for the DVD.

Director Story, whose studio credits -- the hit "Barbershop" and the decidedly nonhit "Taxi" -- wouldn't exactly indicate a convincing affinity for the material, seems to go flat from the very start.

That would be when scientist-inventor Dr. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) embarks on an outer-space mission having something to do with unlocking the secrets of human genetic codes, financed by his old college rival, billionaire industrialist Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon).

They're joined on the trip by Reed's best buddy, astronaut Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), and ex-girlfriend Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), who's now Von Doom's director of research, as well as Sue's hotshot younger brother, Johnny (Chris Evans).

But as the result of a miscalculation, their space station gets zapped by radioactive turbulence that alters each crew member's DNA in remarkably different ways.

Reed turns into a human Gumby, able to stretch and contort his body however he pleases; Sue is able to simultaneously project force fields and render herself invisible provided she sheds all her clothing; Johnny has the capacity for spontaneous combustion; and poor Ben's body mass index goes berserk, rendering him into a hulking rock formation of a tough guy.

As for the iron-fisted, steely eyed Von Doom, he literally turns iron-fisted and steely eyed, with the fitting ability to feed off the city's power supply.

But once they become known as the Fantastic Four, neither Story nor any of the writers who took a crack at the script seem to have figured out where to go next in terms of both an overall tone and discernible visual style.

Lacking the strong creative imprint of a Sam Raimi or a Bryan Singer, the film fails to capture the comic book essence achieved by the "Spider-Man" and "X-Men" movies. The characters, with the exception of Evans' limelight-basking Human Torch and Chiklis' empathetic Thing, are blandly underwritten and anemically interpreted.

There are the occasional glimpses of the sort of fun Jack Kirby and Stan Lee had in mind when they cooked up their dysfunctional family of mainly reluctant superheroes, but they're few and far between, clobbered by a barrage of effects that frankly wouldn't have cut it a decade ago on the Sci Fi Channel and composer John Ottman's uncharacteristically cacophonous score.