Friday, June 22, 2007

"Why are you trying to destroy us?"

Rise of the Silver Surfer actually may be the greatest film since Pearl Harbor. Take from that statement what you will. It wasn't as bad as Stephen Hunter would have you believe ("'Silver Surfer' is drearier than corn dying in the Iowa sun, slower than molasses in Antarctica. Sentient humans should stay away; all others may enter confident that their IQs are already in the Chernobyl-fried range and will not be affected, except for downward."), but there are certain things it was hard to get around: the ludicrous amount of make up that Jessica Alba was buried in and the fact that she could have been replaced with a shapely brick without anyone noticing; the god awful dialogue between the FF and Dr. Doom while flying at high velocities 10,000 feet in the open air; the lack of chemistry between any of the actors; the relatively pointless power transferring effect the Surfer had on the Human Torch; the objectification of women and the treatment of them as complete idiots, and using that as a source of amusement; &c. On the bright side, the Silver Surfer looked cool, and the witty banter and arguing among the FF kinda worked sometimes. Well done, there. The film-goer in me is thoroughly disappointed and maybe a little bit disgusted. The fanboy in me is satiated.

2 comments:

Benjamin Storer said...

Well come on, it's freaking Silver Surfer. He's just another one of those Marvel characters where somebody draws something cool and then they work backwards to give him a story (see Ghost Rider, Sugar Man, Cable, or even Black Panther). The Power Cosmic is so insanely overblown as to make everything unfair.
Also, the movie stars Jessica Alba and Doctor Doom is played by that guy from Charmed. What do you expect?

Flushy McBucketpants said...

Some verisimilitude and internal logic, but that's apparently too much to ask... something fun, but not asinine. An understanding that some things that work on a comics page don't translate well to film. These among other things...