Chicago Reader August 6, 2015 All four principals – Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell – are well-cast, and their gee-whiz idealism is jus...
There are hints of a more compelling story but they are never developed and the movie as a whole seems like the unhappy marriage of competing...
The negative buzz around the new Fantastic Four is so radioactive you could almost expect to develop superpowers just by reading about it.
The Daily Beast August 5, 2015 Flashes of freshness are utterly M.I.A. in Fantastic Four’s final act, which is where its human drama is preempted by stagey, CGI-addled supe...
I can’t remember the last time four actors appeared less invested in a movie for which they’ve teamed up.
ibtimes.com August 7, 2015 I wonder if it escaped from the 20th Century Fox lot as a tax write-off.
There are so many places where you suspect you might feel something, if only it weren’t so badly done.
New York Times August 6, 2015 Ms. Mara disappears. Her character also has the power to make other things vanish. I would say she should have exercised it on this movie, but...
Detroit News August 7, 2015 The film’s dynamic is completely off, offering too much build and too little payoff.
The special effects are cheesy, the acting perfunctory, the plotting pallid.
Independent August 6, 2015 Teller, Mara and company are very capable young actors who bring sensitivity and humour to their roles, but that isn’t necessarily what audie...
There is no bad guy in the history of the F4 who has inflicted as much damage as this sorry, soggy mess.
RogerEbert.com August 6, 2015 Maybe "Fantastic Four" is a cursed property, or maybe just one that shouldn’t be turned into a film?
Director Josh Trank has assembled a quartet of engaging, charismatic performers and stranded them in a miasma of exposition and set-up. S...
Chicago Tribune August 6, 2015 For a movie largely set on a planet ("Planet Zero") coursing with living, liquid energy, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a sup...
Is it a home run? No. But at this point, comic fans are just happy to see Fox play error-free ball with their Marvel adaptations, and "Fantast...
The entire experience is shameful – for us, for the filmmakers, for whoever at the studio had the job of creating the ads, in which the cast a...
Austin Chronicle August 13, 2015 The newest iteration of Stan Lee and Joltin' Jack Kirby’s classic superheroes plays like some misguided cross between an Eighties Afterschool...
Globe and Mail August 7, 2015 A comic book movie that is bizarrely short on humour and action.
The third big-budget attempt to tell the origin story of the Fantastic Four superhero saga on film hasn’t turned out to be the charm.
The Atlantic August 8, 2015 If you would like to admire the awfulness of Fantastic Four without actually having to sit through it--or if you’ve already seen the movie an...
A self-destruct mode is apparently automatically included in any film adaptation of Marvel’s "First Family of Superheroes." This is the third...
Toronto Star August 6, 2015 The fatal flaw is that it squanders more time fashioning these familiar Marvel Comics heroes than it does motivating them.
This Josh Trank-directed reboot had a very low hurdle to overcome to become the best FF movie so far. The most fantastical aspect of the movie...
guidelive.com August 6, 2015 It’s as if it looked at possible templates for excitement and willfully decided to go for something more disjointed and boring.
The Guardian August 9, 2015 For anyone who remembers the strip as drawn by Jack Kirby in its wildly inventive 60s prime, this is beyond depressing.
It’s shockingly humorless and glacially slow for a film featuring a bendy boy genius, an invisible woman, a human torch, and a talk...
There’s a fundamental tonal dissonance at the heart of Fantastic Four. The awkward staging, cut-rate effects, and stilted dialogue might...
Feels less like a blockbuster for this age of comics-oriented tentpoles than it does another also-ran – not an embarrassment, but an expe...
It’s as if the whole Marvel thing got in the way of the indie movie everyone secretly wanted to make - a squeamishness that does no one...
Village Voice August 6, 2015 Counting Roger Corman’s unreleased stab, this is the fourth Fantastic Four movie. It’s also the fourth whose producers seem embarrassed...
Laughably cheesy, bordering on Zardoz levels of simplicity.
Irish Times August 8, 2015 Sadly, in the final 20 minutes, the piece teeters more suddenly and more completely over a metaphorical cliff than any film in recen...
Even a cast of our very finest 28-to-32-year-olds who can sort of pass as adolescents … can’t save this dreary, overfamiliar origin story.
Once those super powers kick in, the whole film goes into a more standard gear. We’ve seen it all before, and it’s safe to say we...
The film’s lack of scale becomes readily apparent in the final confrontation, which is surprisingly toothless.
New York Post August 6, 2015 Much of Josh Trank’s abysmal "Fantastic Four" is set in a barren place called Planet Zero – and you may feel stranded there yoursel...
Times (UK) August 6, 2015 A boy genius develops a teleportation device, beams to another dimension, brings back superpowers, accidentally creates supervillain, has big...
Rolling Stone August 6, 2015 The latest reboot of the Fantastic Four – the cinematic equivalent of malware – is worse than worthless. It not only scrapes the bottom o...
Slant Magazine August 6, 2015 It adds more grist for the mill to the notion that studios don’t hit the big red "reboot" button in any other state than a panic.
Fantastic Four feels like a 100-minute trailer for a movie that never happens.
Boston Globe August 6, 2015 Oh, well – they can always reboot.
A poorly constructed, ineptly executed, flatfooted piece of Branded Product that plays as though it were written by a piece of software fed ev...
"Fantastic Four" is a profound mess. It’s not fun. It’s not exciting. It’s far from action-packed. And it’s most...
An unfortunate movie that does an embarrassing disservice to the decades-old property and is a frightful waste of all the talent involved.
Fantastic Four is an uneventful ride, plunging us into the depths of choppy editing, poor CGI, laughable costume design and one of the worst third...
A light subversion of today’s blockbuster aesthetics… Trank isn’t using characters with built-in visual spectacle to wow us. He’s...
Above all, what distinguishes the film’s approach is the faith it puts in its young lead actors, especially Teller, who made an impact as an...
Fantastic Four is a really good film, shorn of glib know-all theatrics, faux profundity and the spangly CG that’s usually ushered in as...
The Guardian August 5, 2015 A dawdling indie drama, gussied up in superhero garb.
Toronto Sun August 6, 2015 Fantastic Four, yet another live-action, big-screen reboot of the Marvel comic book, starts with a sloooooooow burn that lasts for more than a...
Daily Telegraph August 6, 2015 The film is almost all build-up, though any mounting sense of excitement is dispelled by the monotonously downbeat tone and the cast’s conspi...
