Rumour has it that this movie was made only to retain the rights to the characters, and was never meant to be released. Taking this into account, and the fact that in 1994 CGI wasn't as cheap and usable as it is now, it is nowhere near as bad as it could have been. Apparently the cast and crew didn't know that the end product was never going to see the light of day, so this may explain why it appears as if (some of them) made an effort.
We start with Reed Richards and his friend Victor trying an experiment that kills Victor. 10 years on, Richards is about to go into space to finish the experiment in Victor's honour. His friend Ben Grimm will pilot their shuttle, and they ask two other friends Johnny and Sue Storm to make up the crew. Obviously no training is required, as they launch the next day. Unfortunately for them, the huge diamond that forms a crucial piece of their ship has been replaced with a fake by The Jeweller, who wants it as a gift for the blind Alicia Masters, who has caught Ben's eye.
When their shuttle explodes they find themselves transformed into `The Fantastic Four', but have to contend with Dr. Doom, a super villain who has his own motives for wanting to kill them and The Jeweller, who has kidnapped Alicia. Not to mention their new found superpowers.
First off, the script is pretty corny `Look at you the Fantastic Four,' gushes Johnny and Sue's aunt as the group leave for space. It suffers from the need to tie everything together prevalent in many comic book adaptations, too. There's a number (!) of oddities that stuck out for me: Reed and Sue's relationship seemed a little creepy when we first see them, he is at university (?), but she is a young teenager with a crush on him, yet by the end of the film they are in love; within what seems like a day of their return to the Baxter Building from space Reed has constructed the Fantasticar and had a honking big `4' painted on the building; Johnny, Sue and Ben all use powers that we know they have, but they haven't discovered for themselves (flight, shields and being bullet-proof respectively); and The Human Torch outpaces a laser beam (presumably moving at light speed), and then punches it out before a quick trip into space that would extinguish his flames!
The acting is generally below par, particularly from Jay Underwood as Johnny and Jacob Culp as Dr Doom. The latter seems to be auditioning to play the Cyber Leader in Doctor Who.
The costumes are fairly dire too, with tin-foil space suits and tissue paper containment suits, Sue Storm seems to be dressed c.1950 when we first see her as an adult, though she is the only one who manages to completely carry off the faithful spandex costumes she knocks up for them one afternoon. On the other hand, the `Thing' costume is very good, although it doesn't seem quite bulky enough.
The SFX are pretty poor, it has to be said, though the copy of the movie I watched was pretty ropy, so it was hard to judge fairly. However Sue's invisibility could have been from the 1940's Invisible Man, The Thing's costume was fine, though resolving fights with a Batman-stylee spin was kinda cheap, The Human Torch was too obviously animated to convince, and I'm not convinced that Mr. Fantastic's powers will ever be convincing on screen, but using a vacuum cleaner hose with a glove stuck on the end certainly didn't convince me!
Unfortunately, the film doesn't (quite) fall into the `so bad, it's good' category. In fact it's no worse than some of the TV movie comic adaptations that I've seen. On the whole, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone apart from those who have been wondering what this `lost' movie is really like. For them, it's worth downloading if only to find out if it's as bad as everyone says. Some of them might even find that, like me, they are pleasantly surprised.
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