Fantastic Four. I give it a 'Meh'.

So, I went to see the Fantastic Four movie. I wasn't expecting great things, and I got just what I was expecting.
THE GOOD:
The Thing was pretty good. Looked pretty good, played up more of the angsty 'I'm a big rock monster' than the 'I'm a cute and cuddly rock monster come to kick all nine of your asses'. (And you're quite right, you might only have one to start with, but you'll have nine when he's finished). That being said, he gets a few good lines, and looks great.

Jessica Alba. Not, because, you know, she acted well or had a good character. Just, you know, mmmmm, Jessica Alba.

THE MEH
Horatio Hornblower Reed Richards. Let's face it, Reed isn't exactly a posterboy like Wolverine, and he's a bendy stretchy guy. (Though the "every part of his anatomy?" question does get asked.) So it's not like he was ever going to be a standout (though his wrestle with the Thing is kind of interesting.) (Which is more than can be said for most people's wrestles with their Thing.)

Susan Storm. Apart from the mmmm, Jessica Alba, factor, a generally uninspiring character and performance. Oh, she's apparently a geneticist, which translates to 'translates a single piece of Reed's technobabble'. Brilliant.

Johnny "Human Torch X-TREME!" Storm. Now, characterwise, he's pretty spot on, and he even gets some lines and stuff that made me giggle. But the way they chose to show his rebellious hotheaded side? That's right. They went X-TREME. What's more, they didn't even seem to make it vaguely convincing that he was like this. One moment, he's chafing against the quarantine rules THE MAN imposes after being bombarded by weird ill-defined radiation. The next, obviously STICKING IT TO THE MAN, he's somehow hired a helicopter, gotten some ski gear together, found a woman somewhere and they go to the top of a mountain and start skiing down. Or she does, anyway, since Johnny's way too X-TREME to go skiing and obviously has to snowboard. Y'know, because he's X-TREME. And later, having found notoriety after the Four's 'triumphant' first public performance (where, as near as I can tell, he was seen to do NOTHING - even though that's not true) he apparently trades on his fame to rock up to a Crusty Demons of Dirt spectacular and they let him jump a bike all Fonzie-like. Obviously, the guys who organise that are so totally X-TREME they can recognise a fellow X-TREME guy right off the bat.

THE BAD.
Unfortunately, Victor Von Doom got handed a big spiky shaft in this one. Julian McMahon does a decent job with what he's got to work with - but the movie just doesn't do him justice. You see, instead of being an academic rival of Reed's whose face got disfigured in a lab accident he somehow blames Reed for, and then, being monarch of the small nation of Latveria, proceeds to like learn magic and dress up in a funky battlesuit to come and beat on the Four under cover of diplomatic immunity (yeah, real diplomatic, there, Latveria) - instead of all that, we have a dapper billionaire with ego issues. Who goes up into space with the Fantastic Four (but stays behind shielding like a pussy while the other four are trying to pull Ben back from a completely unexplained calculation whoopsie with the big energy thingo). Nonetheless, he begins to develop weird lightning powers and turn into metal. Oh, yeah, and he proposes to Sue Storm as well (and who can blame him? Mmmm, Jessica Alba). And Julian McMahon doesn't quite have the voice for Doom even once he's behind a metal mask.

THE SECOND TRUCK
Some things that don't make an awful lot of sense...

The energy cloud thingy that gives them their powers. Now, don't think that I'm chucking off at some good, solid, comic book rubber science here - I'm not. What I'm chucking off at is how it somehow sneaks up on them when they're not looking in defiance of all their calculations - which is never explained. Reed even goes so far as to say he's rechecked all the numbers, yada yada. Presumably they're trying to say something (possibly 'they got these powers for a reason") - but if so, I think they're saying it with marbles in their mouth while banging on a turd log with a sledgehammer.

The 'unveiling' scene, where the Four all first use their powers for the Greater Good. Admittedly, the problems all start when the Thing goes to try and save a guy who was just about to jump off a bridge, but there are a couple of things that gave me a 'Second Truck' moment.
They get Sue Storm to turn invisible and strip off so she can 'get through the crowd'. I mean, hey, I'm all for imaginary naked Jessica Alba, but I can get plenty of that for free, thank you. The weird part is when they show her visible again and putting the last of her clothing on (there's no visible naked Jessica Alba, all right?), Reed and Johnny are right there. Having had no apparent problems 'getting through the crowd'. Which makes me think of the following off-camera exchange.
Sue: You two got through just fine.
Johnny: Yup. Just shouldered through, we were okay.
Sue: But I had to go through going invisible and getting naked. Or so Reed said.
Reed: Estimating the ratio of your mass against the mass of the crowd, I thought your probability of success would be orders of magnitude larger if you went through invisibly.
Johnny: In other words, he just wanted to see if he could get you naked.
Reed: Well, yeah. Can't blame a guy for trying.
Sue: You knew, Johnny? And you didn't stop him?
Johnny: Why should I?
Sue: You're my brother? Ring any bells?
Johnny: Yeah, but you're also a smokin' hot babe. Heh. Get it? Smokin' hot. I can make my thumb into a cigarette lighter, you know.
Sue: I'll make your skull into a bowling ball. I'm your sister.
Johnny: Looked in the mirror lately? Sis, you're a walking advertisement for incest.
Reed: You know, incest is really not a very good idea. The probabilities -
Storms: Shut up, Reed.
The other second truck moment from this scene is that Johnny doesn't actually do any amazing Human Torch stuff - he shields a little girl from an explosion with his body, but that's it. Reed stretches, Thing does his Thing, Sue gets naked and then contains an explosion with a forcefield - but Johnny doesn't do anything amazingly superhuman. And somehow they get the name 'Fantastic Four' from this little fiasco.

Oh, and the Teleporting Thing from near the end. (As in 'continuity glitch leaving teleportation or flight as the only explanation', not actual teleportation.)

So it's not the sort of movie I want to gouge my eyeballs out after seeing (though I might if I was a big Dr. Doom fan). It's just a superhero movie that doesn't live up to the fairly recent standard of superhero movies like X-Men, Spider-Man, and Batman Begins.