| 75 |
New York Daily News
It's almost a surprise that the sequel is actually better - much better - than the original.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
One of the most enjoyable pictures of the season.
|
| 67 |
Portland Oregonian
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, is . . . well . . . not terrible. In fact, "Rise of the Silver Surfer" is roughly 300 percent less cringe-inducing than its predecessor.
|
| 67 |
Baltimore Sun
What keeps the Fantastic Four franchise alive is the Human Torch's emotional fire and the Silver Surfer's melancholy ice.
|
| 67 |
Christian Science Monitor
As summer franchise superhero flicks go, it's tolerable.
|
| 63 |
Charlotte Observer
When will the people who adapt comic books into films realize that less can be so much more?
|
| 63 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Like its predecessor, this is a basic bungalow of a flick, where low-maintenance superheroes take their ease and you can pay your (dis)respects painlessly enough. In short, okay to visit, wouldn't want to live there.
|
| 63 |
USA Today
Scott Bowles
Doesn't quite live up to the billing, but it improves mightily on the original. And the superhero family can thank its new addition for the upgrade.
|
| 63 |
Premiere
It's a decent comic-book movie that delivers its goods with good humor and a minimum of bloat.
|
| 60 |
Empire
Bigger, better and more polished than the first, with a quite satisfactory ratio of action set-pieces and a lot of juvenile japery squarely aimed at its PG and fanboy audience.
|
| 60 |
Slate
Dana Stevens
It's miscast, underwritten, muddily shot, and slackly paced, but there's something captivating about its unabashed shittiness.
|
| 60 |
Variety
At a time when tortured superheroes like Spider-Man, Superman and Batman would benefit from some serious psychotherapy, it's almost refreshing to see a comicbook caper as blithe, weightless and cheerfully dumb as Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
|
| 50 |
Chicago Tribune
It is passable comic book stuff, dumb and loud. Loud. LOUD.
|
| 50 |
LA Weekly
The script, credited to "Twin Peaks" co-creator Mark Frost and longtime "Simpsons" writer Don Payne, unsuccessfully strives for hipster irreverence.
|
| 50 |
The Hollywood Reporter
An improvement of sorts over the lifeless 2005 edition.
|
| 50 |
TV Guide
The result is strictly for those who like their comic-book movies short and stupid.
|
| 50 |
Wall Street Journal
Good fun -- more fun than in the original -- punctuated by some lines of admirable awfulness.
|
| 50 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Diverting, at times even visually impressive, but has neither the spirit or style of "Spider-Man" nor the ambition of "X-Men."
|
| 50 |
Los Angeles Times
Earnest, gee-whiz and foursquare, this simple and intentionally inoffensive sequel gets points for being easy to take and scrupulously avoiding obvious sources of irritation.
|
| 50 |
New York Post
The silliest sci-fi movie since "An Inconvenient Truth."
|
| 50 |
Salon.com
More ambitious than its predecessor. It's also more cluttered and less fleet: The light, pleasingly casual quality of the first picture has evolved into something forced and metallic.
|
| 50 |
Boston Globe
The early dilemma in "Rise of the Silver Surfer " is this: Save the world or marry Jessica Alba . Your conscience says, "Save the world." But the Maxim reader in you knows better.
|
| 50 |
Film Threat
A better-quality sequel, but that wasn't really too difficult. The original was one of the worst movies of 2005, and while "Rise" won't win any awards, it's (mostly) less offensive than its predecessor. Faint praise, but I'll be damned if I go any further than that.
|
| 50 |
Miami Herald
Even within the context of the superhero universe, the Silver Surfer initially makes for -- let's face it -- a somewhat silly-looking creation.
|
| 50 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
The closest FF:ROTSS gets to wit is when Johnny convinces a reluctant Reed to attend a bachelor party, after promising the uptight groom-to-be that there won't be any "exotic dancers."
|
| 42 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Purists will balk at a pointless--and boring--revamp of a major villain, but that's the least of the film's worries. Only a few isolated shots of the group striding together as a team make Surfer feel like a Fantastic Four movie.
|
| 42 |
Entertainment Weekly
The dialogue aims young and low, and sounds translated from comic-book Esperanto.
|
| 38 |
ReelViews
A tedious, incoherent bore.
|
| 30 |
Austin Chronicle
Relentlessly dull and curiously bombastic.
|
| 30 |
Chicago Reader
This sequel to "Fantastic Four" (2005) drags in the Silver Surfer, who looks like a gigantic hood ornament and, given voice by Laurence Fishburne, has about as much personality.
|
| 30 |
The New York Times
This existentially and aesthetically unnecessary sequel to the equally irrelevant if depressingly successful "Fantastic Four."
|
| 25 |
Rolling Stone
The perfect summer movie, that is if you're eight years old or under. For the rest of us, the sequel to the first "Fantastic Four" that miraculously amassed more than $150 million in 2005, is a plotless, brainless, witless bore.
|
| 20 |
Washington Post
Surely the dullest of Hollywood's many comic-book-derived summer movies, "Silver Surfer" is drearier than corn dying in the Iowa sun, slower than molasses in Antarctica.
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