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Evan Bartlett
Aug 09, 2015
Fant4stic, the third instalment of Marvel’s Fantastic Four superhero series starring Kate Mara, Michael Jordan, Miles Teller and Jamie Bell has been released in cinemas.
The film “centres on four young outsiders who teleport to an alternate and dangerous universe,” an “alternate and dangerous universe” which has been well and truly panned by the critics - scoring a mightily low 9 per cent on review website Rotten Tomatoes.
Here are some of the best worst reviews:
Associated Press
Inexplicably plodding and dreary... It's not wholesale terrible - just depressingly mediocre, and at a certain point you sort of start wishing it WERE definitively terrible, because that would at least make it more entertaining.
The Atlantic
How bad is the latest effort to establish a cinematic franchise out of Marvel Comics’ iconic super-group the Fantastic Four? Well, it’s the worst to date - which is a substantial achievement… a dull, sour, claustrophobic mess: 80 minutes of tedious origin story followed by 20 minutes of more-tedious-still climax.
The Guardian
A dawdling indie drama, gussied up in superhero garb.
Time Out
Naff catchphrases, brain-grinding exposition and lifeless punch-ups, the talented cast totally overwhelmed by the duff CG special effects… it’s amazing the result is watchable at all.
The Christian Science Monitor
I’ve seen some dull superhero movies in my day, but 'Fantastic Four,' written and directed by Josh Trank, gets the booby prize.
The special effects are cheesy, the acting perfunctory, the plotting pallid. If this film spawns a sequel, anything goes.
Grantland
My notebook usually remains near my lap, but at this movie, it made involuntary trips over my mouth to cover all of my gasping.
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 appear to be starring in hostage posters.
Eclipse
It’s bland, joyless, lifeless, claustrophobic, and created by a bunch of people who had zero interest in the property. Director Josh Trank clearly had no desire to make this. The entire affair looks lazy and cheap.
Vox
Fantastic Four is an unmitigated garbage fire [which] feels like taking a cheese grater to your soul...
'We have to stop Victor. He is the source,’ are actual words said by alleged genius Reed Richards. He arrives at this revelation after Victor has already annihilated a government base and bested the Four in one fight. The declaration is said with the amount of enthusiasm you might have when accepting a lukewarm beer.
Movie Mezzanine
[This film should be] ignored for the unremarkable - and completely familiar corporate bowel movement that it is.
The Times
It’s as if comic-book movies have become their own supervirus, wildly infectious and creatively contagious, sucking up million-dollar budgets and cannibalising themselves for plots, themes, moods and ideas, until all that remains is one giant garbled meta-story ('Nerd gets muscles!') retold on an endless loop, with younger and younger actors, until someone finally straps a cape on a foetus and the whole thing implodes into an idiotic paradox of dreary spectacle… Which is where we find the new Fantastic Four.
Rolling Stone
The latest reboot of the Fantastic Four - the cinematic equivalent of malware - is worse than worthless. It not only scrapes the bottom of the Marvel-movie barrel; it knocks out the floor and sucks audiences into a black hole of soul-crushing, coma-inducing dullness.
The Oregonian
Whoever devised the cookie-cutter plot and hackneyed dialogue that clotted up and formed this cinematic scab, it's clear that they missed the point.
Dallas Morning News
It's as if it looked at possible templates for excitement and willfully decided to go for something more disjointed and boring.
AV Club
It’s shockingly humorless and glacially slow for a film featuring a bendy boy genius, an invisible woman, a human torch, and a talking pile of stones.
Metro.us
For the record, 'Fantastic Four' is honestly merely inoffensively uninspired in its first half, then bad, and finally eye-bulgingly pathetic. It looks like someone gave up on it halfway through.
RedEye
An outstretched, moronic, drama-less time-suck that somehow manages to be less fun than Pixels, which was only slightly more enjoyable than slamming a door on your face.