The best thing about Fantastic Four is it's run time. Aside from that, it's just a bad, dumb movie. At 106 minutes, it's far shorter than most superhero films of recent - in fact, the entire third act could have been scrapped, second act extended and given more thought and characterisation, and the film still would have been a tighter and more cohesive 90 minute film. Following Ant Man as a smaller-scale superhero film, Fantastic Four could have really worked nicely as small film. Josh Trank's debut Chronicle was exactly that, and it was a large factor in people's enjoyment of the film: a human-scale "superhero" film.

There are a couple of positives about this film. Firstly, the fact that the four main characters are not particularly special, two of them are geeks in their own respects and the other two are nice, normal tough guys. They become "superheroes" involuntarily. The Cronenbergian element that Trank wanted to add to the film could be felt in a few shots, and they were genuinely unsettling and could have utilised the actors' potential far more. Unfortunately, the most interesting period of these character's lives which really could have elevated the film to a new level is replaced by a black screen saying "One Year Later". This is saved briefly by Dr. Doom walking around Area 57 (what's an Area 57?) and blowing people's heads up, which is a nice touch - but this is also later undermined by the totally unnecessary third act.

Even by superhero movie standards, this film was dumb. I found myself enjoying bits of it when my expectations had fallen below rock bottom, but those moments hardly elevated the rest of the film. There were glimpses of real potential, which made it all the harder to watch. It's confusingly clunky for a product that had $122 million injected into it - this may of course be due to the continuing reports of Fox overriding Trank's directorial decisions and doing reshoots. This would explain why half of the shots seen in the trailers didn't even appear in the theatrical release.

A great cast make up the Fantastic Four - given next to nothing to work with. It's frustrating to watch Miles Teller say cliché after cliché, post- Whiplash. It's frustrating to see Michael B. Jordan play a stereotypical smartass after Fruitvale Station. You get it - the cast is filled with talented actors. It's a shame that their characters are so incredibly boring with virtually zero chemistry between them. There is an attempt at a love triangle between Sue Storm, Victor Von Doom and Reed Richards - but no one seems to really share any mutual emotions. Reed seems to like Sue, but never does anything about it; Victor seems to like Sue and wants her but just acts sullen and not very nice; Sue says approximately two lines of dialogue in the film and seems to have no interest in any other humans than her brother and father - sometimes.

Character motivations are also particularly dumb, especially Dr. Doom's reasoning for doing whatever he does. He says something about Earth, and something about humans being nasty, and something about Planet Zero being the cool place in the universe to be. He kills a bunch of scientists and guards by making their heads explode in a cool but PG-13 fashion and then goes off to make a black hole portal out of blue light and rocks. It sounds camp and fun, but it isn't. If it was explicitly said that he went crazy after a year entirely alone, suffering incredible pain and having a vendetta against those who left him, it would make a whole lot more sense.

This film is clunky, a tonal mess with a clichéd script and dull characters played by excellent but bored actors.

P.S. To all YouTube editors with far too much time on their hands: take 10 minutes of the film and replace all the dialogue with dialogue from existing films - it won't be hard, there's not a single original line of dialogue in the film.