Not-so-Fab leader: Pedro Pascal in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’
THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS *1/2 (114 minutes) PG
Fantastic Four? Fantastic bore.
Early glimpses of The Fantastic Four held the enticing promise of an exciting, cheeky superhero actioner brandishing the distinctive period look of the 1960s.
Alas, the thing is a bland-out, yet another example – so soon after Superman – of a $200 million Hollywood movie with no apparent ambition other than the rousing of a mere “meh” from the audience. Only this one doesn’t have a dog.
While the picture certainly looks pretty with all its retro-futuristic trappings (flying cars; servant robot and saucer-topped skyscrapers a la The Jetsons) the attempts at humour are strained, the performances astonishingly flat, the characters composed of cardboard and the story – even given the license we grant such heightened fantasy comic-book adventure larks – extremely thin and very, very silly.
The one good thing is that there’s no need for a lengthy set-up as we dive straight in, with Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), wife Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) facing off against The Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) who introduces them all to mega-villain Galactus (Ralph Ineson).
The brief of this over-sized giant is to munch through planets with his monstrous rock-crunching apparatus, Earth being the next world on his work sheet scheduled for obliteration.
So, cue the usual round of frenetically edited action sequences with swirling camera moves, urban destruction and things exploding.
But for the Fantastic Four’s beautifully designed flying car, it all looks much the same as most Marvel action sequences, the common factor being how they are all so utterly forgettable – a term that easily applies to this,. dull, colourless, unenthusiastic serving of multiplex mulch.
FOUR LETTERS OF LOVE ** (110 minutes) M
Here be a rather rickety period romantic melodrama about young love, painting and how shakable belief in God can be.
Along the blustery coast of Ireland, poet Nicholas (Fionn O’Shea) reflects on his relationship with his father William (Pierce Brosnan), a civil servant who goes rogue one day at the office when a light pattern on his desk tells him to up stumps and become a painter.
God tells him to do this, apparently, though The Almighty doesn’t follow through with any sound financial advice about how selling the odd painting is any sort of replacement for the security of a steady income.
At the same time, Isabel (Ann Skelly, presently in possession of one of the most beautiful faces on screen) is coping with her incapacitated brother Sean (Dónal Finn) and the decision by her loving parents (Gabriel Byrne & Helena Bonham-Carter) to send her to nun school.
The long and winding road that leads to the pair finally hooking up is the main driver of the eminently sudsy story, with happenstance and Divine intervention playing their parts in a feathery, soft-centred yarn that toggles between lauding and questioning faith.
The film, perfunctorily directed by Polly Steele, is based on the best-selling same-named novel by Niall Williams, who also did the screenplay.
Undemanding romantics might go for the mush of Four Letters of Love, and you can’t help but love the wind-blasted scenery, yet the film overplays the schmaltz as it plods along.