Director: Tim Story, US, PG, 106min
Stars: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon
On general release

Tim Story’s live action homage to Stan Lee and his vintage Marvel heroes is a fantastic load of old cobblers. We have been to these strange parts before, most notably with The Incredibles, a cartoon family of super-freaks who are not only infinitely more entertaining but considerably more realistic than their 3-D brethren.

The plot is risibly familiar. Another routine day in space goes badly wrong when Dr Victor Von Doom’s trillion- dollar satellite is blasted by a cosmic storm. The radiation plays strange tricks on our shapely cast of brilliant young scientists. Gruffudd (Mr Fantastic) discovers that he can bend for America — he can slip his hand under doors and unlock them from the inside. The delicious Alba (Invisible Woman) becomes transparent when she gets excited, which means taking her clothes off at the first hint of an impending crisis. Evans (Human Torch) is surprisingly untraumatised by his habit of bursting into flames in hotel lifts. And Chiklis (The Thing) draws the short straw when he is transformed into a three- fingered, armour-plated road map. There is also ill- concealed glee among the others about the tightness of his breeches.

They are, of course, the Fantastic Four, and their first mission is to stop McMahon’s evil Dr Doom from taking over the world.

BACKGROUND

• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - Sunday Times review

• Game Review - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

BACKGROUND

• Fantastic Four

• Film: A blast from the past

• The comic strip presents... Jessica Alba profile

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Related Internet Links

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Their erstwhile employer has gone insane, but he has a couple of useful tricks up his sleeve. He can suck the electricity supply out of skyscrapers and throw lightning bolts like bullets.

Before our heroes get down to business, there’s a certain amount of PR to be done. Suicide jumpers have to be caught, a crew of firemen are plucked from the brink of certain death, and cars bouncing down motorways are fielded like cricket balls. Exciting? I nearly passed out with all the déjà vu.

It’s slightly tragic that the comic strip heroes who launched a thousand dodgy impersonators should be so easily and cruelly outclassed by the geek films that they have inspired. This isn’t so much raising the bar on a CGI-saturated genre as planting a hefty tombstone.