Fantastic Four

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

OK, let’s get this straight right off. Fantastic Four is no Spider-Man 2, a marvelous marriage of a classic comic-book tale, incredible special effects and a powerful underlying storyline that speaks to an inner-most urge of every person to be a hero.

And, given the structure of last summer’s hit The Incredibles, the characters of Fantastic Four may seem familiar, unoriginal and redundant, especially to those who haven’t read the longest-running Marvel Comic Book series and weren’t around for the 1970s Saturday-morning cartoon show.

And it’s definitely not fantastic. Granted, there are some very nice special-effects, but there’s little the average movie-goer will remember after emerging into the summer heat that rivals the coolness of the theater’s air-conditioning.

But, judging the film on what it seems to aspire to be, a B movie that provides a couple hours of diversion during the dog days of summer, Fantastic Four achieves its minimalist purpose. This isn’t going to revive Hollywood’s slumping box office, but neither will it disappear from your local Cineplex after a week.

The plot is simple. An experiment in space led by Reed goes awry, giving super-human powers to four scientists and the experiment’s financial backer, who emerges as the film’s antagonist. Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), dubbed Mr. Fantastic, is able to bend and stretch his body. Susan Storm (Jessica Alba), the Invisible Woman, can disappear and generate force fields. Her brother, Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), the Human Torch, can fly and serve as the conduit for Super-Nova-like heat. Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), the Thing, has incredible strength with skin that takes the shape of armadillo-like plates. For the project’s financier, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), the botched result leads to financial ruin and provides motivation for using his new abilities for power and vengeance.

The PG-13 film as a whole is pretty predictable:

• A love triangle between the principle protagonist, the female lead and the villain.
• Having lost the girl and his business, the billionaire industrialist seeks world domination.

But the film has a few things to offer.

Each of the Fantastic Four tries to understand his or her new powers and wrestle with questions over responding to this new sense of destiny. At its worst, Susan Storm can’t deal with the choice of needing to be naked for her gift to work. At its best, Ben Grimm faces questions about what he values in life when he experiences rejection from the person who he thought was his loving wife over the Thing he has become.

Another interesting subplot is Johnny Storm’s reckless personality, the relationship of that to the super hero persona, and his characterization as a cross between shameless huckster and a shrewd image consultant in marketing Fantastic Four to their world. Super heroes do take risks, but in Storm’s approach the cost is never ascertained before making the leap of faith.

By contrast, Reed Richards is an over-cautious perfectionist, whose professional and personal failures are rooted in his inability to take anything on faith or move forward without complete certainty in the outcome.

Those instances illustrate best why the Fantastic Four worked as team – just as the individual Beatles never achieved the success resulting from their synergy as a group. And just as the church, the body of Christ, is incomplete without each part fulfilling its necessary function.

In a similar way, Fantastic Four as a film fulfills its necessary function – a temporary relief from a hot summer afternoon, a soon-to-be cheap DVD rental, a dose of entertainment that will do little to occupy anyone’s thoughts beyond its 123-minute running time. Others, perhaps, may think it should have achieved something more. I’ll let you ponder that question further, because I’ve already given it more thought than the movie sought or merits.

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

—Overview
—Photos
—About this Film

There are some times when it makes sense to remake a picture for more than simply financial gain. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a remake of the 1971 classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was not one of those times.

This film, directed by Tim Burton, sought to be a darker Chocolate Factory than the 1971 flavor, which some critics have recalled as too saccharine. Think of the song “The Candy Man” as an example. And the casting of Johnny Depp in the role of Willy Wonka held promise of a different take on the beloved novel by Roald Dahl. Dark chocolate rather than milk chocolate, they said.

At its heart, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a morality play in which five children win golden tickets that gain them admittance into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, a magical place where everything is edible. While Burton ’s imagery is stunning, the result is less stunning than one would expect given a generation of technological innovations in filmmaking. Vices for each of the children, except Charlie, take them out of the running for the coveted prize, yet the lesson isn’t as clear as a generation ago. It may have to do with the mostly unintelligible song lyrics sung by the Oompah-Loompahs – less memorable, but musically more in tune with the current day.

Most of the children -- with the exception of Charlie and Violet Beauregarde (who matches her mother) – seem to be cast to match as close as possible their 1971 counterparts. Unlike the 1971 version, however, at least we see the characters get their comeuppance and walk away.

There are some funny moments in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One involves a squadron of nut de-shelling squirrels. Another satirizes Disney-like Small World display. The latter is one of multiple pop-culture references – touching everything from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Psycho to popular songs. In this writer’s opinion, the insipidity of a screenplay increases with the number of such references, and this movie gives weight to that theory.

Yet Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ultimately suffers because Depp’s Wonka comes off as a cross between Michael Jackson, Mr. Rogers and Dana Carvey’s “church lady.” While there’s a satisfying addition of a back story, which has Wonka being raised by an obsessive dentist father (Christopher Lee), the painfully dysfunctional characterization of Wonka advances neither the story nor Charlie (Freddie Highmore), who was to have been a greater focus of this version. There were, in truth, dark elements to the ’71 Wonka (magnificently played by Gene Wilder). And Charlie’s screenplay does not compare to the witty dialogue of the 1971 version. When Depp’s Wonka invites Charlie to come live with him, there’s a hint of invitation to Jackson ’s Neverland ranch, particularly when Charlie’s family isn’t allowed. This isn’t dark, just creepy.

By contrast, Charlie Bucket is just too good. There’s no desire here for Charlie to go beyond Wonka’s boundaries as in the original with the Fizzy Lifting Drinks. There’s no temptation to use his Chocolate Factory access to sell out Wonka for revenge. But there still are moments of inspiration. In one scene, Charlie offers to sell his prized Golden Ticket to feed his starving family. One of his relatives urges him not to give away something priceless for “only money.”

The film’s thematic strength is its emphasis on the importance of family, which Wonka learns from Charlie’s example. But this focus is not enough to salvage a film that, in retrospect, seems like it was made for “only money.”

MOVIE
—Overview
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—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections

BOOK
—Review: WonkaMania

—Blog: Kevin Miller
—Blog: Jacob Sahms