Calling the 1961 comic debut of the Fantastic Four groundbreaking would no doubt elicit a cry of “It’s clobberin’ time!” from super-hero historians and rabid comic fans worldwide. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s vision of a super-powered team filtered through the dynamic of an otherwise normal “family” not only broke new ground, it forged a template for flawed, relatable heroes that uprooted comics from the basements and sidewalks of carefree youth (who ate up the more campy, simplistic offerings of previous standard-bearer DC Comics) and planted them in a more grown-up demographic, where comics still reside today. (Seriously, who do you think is ponying up 20 bucks a week for comics? Teenagers? Hah.) And once so established, iconic FF artist Jack Kirby upped the ante considerably with his ability to show readers just what boundless imagination looked like, with visuals that took four relatively normal folks to the edges of reality and then leapt miles beyond.

So, with such rich source material to draw from, why isn’t Fantastic Four, the film debut of Marvel’s First Family, similarly awe-inspiring? Because it tries to do too damn much. It tries to cram roughly ten years of character development and graphic innovation into around two hours of film. The ambition places this Marvel effort ahead of prior duds Hulk and Daredevil, but the execution drops it a couple of notches below the gold standard X-Men and Spider-Man franchises.

I don’t know if director Tim Story is to blame, or writers Michael France and Mark Frost, or some combination of all three, but the movie plays out like a collection of mismatched parts of separate scripts, included only to link together the Big Action/Fight scenes. The action scenes themselves tend to look chaotic and don’t really help advance the plot or flesh out the characters. In particular, the big, destructive bridge scene, where the four reveal their powers and work as a team for the first time, suffers from bad editing; it’s hard to get a handle on what’s going on, how the Fantastic Four end up in the middle of it, and how the reaction of the innocent bystanders changes so quickly from panic to reverence towards our neophyte heroes.

Frustratingly, the movie’s flaws often exist right beside its strengths. The dead-on performances of Ioan Gruffudd (as mental giant/social retard Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic) and Chris Evans (as figuratively and literally hotheaded Johnny Storm, the Human Torch) are sabotaged by the misguided work of Julian McMahon as arch-foe Dr. Doom (a villain who is classically arrogant, not smarmy—someone clue McMahon into the differences between the two before the inevitable sequel) and the boneheaded casting of Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman.

I never imagined I’d even think this, much less write it: I wish Jessica Alba wasn’t in this movie. The rationale the producers had in signing up Ms. Alba is, pardon the pun, transparent: let’s neutralize the potential naysaying riot of rabid, horny, buzz-killing fanboys by distracting them with the charms of a gorgeous woman. A scene where the viewer actually gets an explanation about how Sue’s powers work is totally contradicted by what takes place during the ill-conceived bridge scene (the contradiction becoming necessary, in order to achieve the higher goal of getting Alba onscreen in her undies.

To break this tie in the good/bad portrayal of characters, Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing gets his tragic character cut off at the knees during the film. Through the first 90 minutes of the movie, Grimm is shown to be Reed Richards’ most unwavering supporter and best friend, sometimes to his detriment (he ends up with rocks for soft tissue, for Pete’s sake). He also smells the rat in Victor Von Doom right away. So when the rat tries to manipulate Ben into turning against Reed, has Doom signed up for Clobbering Time? Goodness, no. Grimm signs up with a quickness previously seen only in the French. Of course. How are we to have any drama at all when it comes time to confront the Arch Nemesis, if Ben Grimm remains true to character? Lazy writing, that’s how. When the needs of your plot (and your special effects budget) determine how your characters behave and the situations they end up in, and not vice-versa, that’s a hack job.

While these observations seem nit-picky and, well, geeky, talking about them here illustrates my primary beef with Fantastic Four. For all their efforts to include whiz-bang special effects, little character details and backstory, romance, and good vs. evil showdowns, there’s little evidence that the producers wanted to focus on any part of it; I walked out of the theater with basically nothing to say about it. Nothing so good that I’d recommend seeing it in a theater or buying the DVD, and nothing so defective that I screamed, “You are raping the corpse of Jack ‘the King’ Kirby!” Fantastic Four is basically unmemorable and certainly doesn’t take advantage of the richness that the initial comics had to offer.

You want to see the movie these guys should have made? Go to the bookstore or hit amazon.com for The Essential Fantastic Four Volume 1. You can pick it up for the cost of 2 matinee tickets and some popcorn.

[Welcome aboard, Tim! -- ed.]