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Stan Lee has continuously remarked that the Fantastic Four are the greatest superheroes he's ever created, trumping even Spider-Man and the Hulk for the Marvel Comics gold star. To be perfectly honest, they are the coolest of them all-they have special powers that can, in certain circumstances, make them completely invulnerable. Not to mention, they don't have identities to keep in the shadows, so any Joe Blow could recognize Mr. Fantastic sitting on a bench in the park. The comic book has mulled over from screenplay to screenplay, and tossed from every distributor available-and even turned into a controversial 1994 movie that Marvel has tried to forget in its existence. So here we are, with the capabilities of Industrial Light and Magic in the 21 century-can we go wrong? Fantastic Four is entertaining, and provides a worthy origin story to our four heroes, but it's also fair to say that it's a bit clunky in its presentation. Not riding as smooth as the other superhero movies such as Batman Begins, it prefers to take itself less seriously than the other comics, but still gives a bang on the action level. It just falls a little short of fantastic.

Reed Richards (Gruffudd) has been a lifelong prodigy, a declared genius by the science world, but recently bankrupted after a few mistakes in his last experiment. With his longtime friend and astronaut Ben Grimm (Chiklis), they plan to bring their new experiment to the hands of Reed's old high school nemesis, the multi-millionaire Victor Von Doom (McMahon). The experiment is meant to study the upcoming cosmic ray clouds which could change one's DNA and advance the world's knowledge of the human body. When Von Doom agrees to it, he brings along Reed's ex-girlfriend and scientist Sue Storm (Alba) and her daredevil brother Johnny Storm (Evans). When a miscalculation occurs, and the cosmic storms tread upon these five astronauts, they find themselves endowed with superpowers. Reed has the ability to stretch his body in any way possible (Mr. Fantastic), Sue has the ability to become invisible and create force fields (Invisible Girl), Johnny can light his entire body on fire and fly (The Human Torch), and Ben transforms into a monstrous super-strong being (The Thing). When the failed space mission bankrupts Victor, he uses his new superpowers-his skin becomes metal and can shoot electric waves-to end off the Fantastic Four.

Here we have an example of a great casting job, considering the kind of caliber this movie was trying to achieve. Ioan Gruffudd, who hardly impressed me in the bravador role of Lancelot in last year's snoozer 'King Arthur', works great playing a straight man and better yet as a nerd. He's dashing in several ways, and it's no surprise that he's being considered for the role of James Bond, along with his co-star Julian McMahon. McMahon is slick and evil, in the most cliched way possible. He has that lurking voice that tells you first thing offhand: he's the bad guy and he's going to be called Dr. Doom. Jessica Alba, projecting a little more flexibility with her character than in the past, is absolutely delicious looking-and sounding-as Susan Storm. When we're dealing with an Invisible Woman, we need to make sure she's young, and she's good-looking, otherwise there's no point in beefing up the movie without sex appeal. Chris Evans is a hoot, as promised. His role in 'Cellular' has given him some leeway into the action genre, and he has the comedic charisma just to fit the smart-ass Johnny Storm character. Nobody could've played the Thing better than Michael Chiklis, and he gives the character a soul rather than a heart of stone. We feel pity for him, and his booming, choky voice has that sad feeling lying within him. He's certainly got the muscle to handle the Thing costume, and he's got the power-Chiklis is a winning key in the Fantastic Four.

What this movie is lacking is a proper screenplay. Of course, I can understand that this is not trying to take itself too seriously, but there are points when the plot could have bene laid out more cautiously. I'm not going to go into comic book minutae, even though the argument can be produced that this is not the correct story of how Dr. Doom came to be. The lines didn't have to written so inanely, the progress could paused itself and not toppled one scene change to another-the movie moves too quickly, and it hurt my mind at times. Some lines of dialogue are so laughably bad, and when it tries to go serious, no one in the theater can treat it correctly. But we have to remember this is just plain entertaining fluff of the summer, and for what it's worth, it carries a lot. The special effects are superb, and really allow the characters to flow the way they should. Without them, Fantastic Four would be a obsolete and even clunkier movie.

Fantastic Four is mediocre at most, but enjoyable nonetheless. As far as comic book movies go, there are better out on the market today, but as blockbuster fly, this is top-notch no-brains-necessary entertainment. Now if only the screenwriters could've magically been hit by a cosmic storm and been given incredible writing talent, then maybe this would've earned a star or more. Sadly, no.

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