Movie Preview: Brit Horror with serious bonafides — Listen for the “Whistle” 

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Roger Moore

IFC plucked this one and has it set for 2026 release.

Looks excruciating, but in a good way.

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Movie Review: Insomnia Cure? “Invincible Swordsman”

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Roger Moore


“Invincible Swordsman” is a slick, beautifully-designed Chinese action fantasy that never escapes the trap of “time suck” that so many Wuxia thrillers fall into.

That’s the period piece martial arts genre that revels in flying fighters and supernatural skills, polished by the centuries and — so the saying goes — lost to the mists of time in our modern age.

Swords spin like power-drills and a hailstorm of needles and threads are as much a menace as any blow delivered by foot or fist. Mystical powers are learned from a “Sunflower Manual,” sought and sucked-up by one shaman/fighter when he or she wins a fight with another.

This film, based on a book by Louis Cha, gets buried early on under exposition, characters, prologue and prosaic lists of arcane Chinese martial arts skills, passed down from master to student.

It’s a tale of intrigues and trickery and murderous battles for supremacy between an ever-expanding “demonic” The Sun Moon Holy Cult and that the Mount Hua Sect, one martial arts/religious group to oppose their domination.

Invincible East (Yuqi Zhang) seizes power from the murderous cult leader Ren Woxing (Terence Yin) in a mountaintop battle. Things promise to be just as murderous under new management as they were under the old regime.

Star Mount Hua student Linghu Chong (Tim Huang) would rather lose himself in his music on the Cliffs of Contemplation than do battle. He’s become friends with the deposed Ren daughter (Lu Xuan) and her pal/confidante Blue Phoenix (Cai Xiangyu) via music. But other members of the Mount Hua sect recognize this for the threat that it is.

Only the intervention of Master Feng, played by the venerable martial arts choreographer and star Sammo Hung, keeps Linghu from utter banishment.

But when he meets the fair Ms. Invincible East by “chance,” he is smitten. The fact that she won’t tell him her name lets us know where all this is going.

There is a lot of movie, filled with preliminary flirtations, bouts, debates and betrayals, before we get to the inevitable third act showdown. Things turn tedious and repetitious early and director Yiwei Luo’s pacing is right up there with the slowest and most sluggish “Harry Potter” movies.

One set-piece scene is illustrative of this film’s can’t-get-us-to-the-(Black)-forest-because-it’s-distracted by-the-trees problems. Master Feng teaches Linghu the nine “stances” one must master with a sword in a fight by flinging black and white discs from the ancient game “Go” at him.

“Sword swinging stance! Sword falling stance! Sword evading stance! Sword disorder stance! Sword defeating stance!” On and on this goes, a cliched “training” scene that has a lot less purpose than its inclusion in the script lets on.

Linghu must learn that “Loneliness is not the same as solitude,” (in Mandarin Chinese with subtitles). But must he? Dude’s never alone. Women like the handsome lad’s company, some more than others.

Fights erupt, body parts are occasionally hacked off, often returning to their owner via magic. And somebody covets the “Three Corpse Brain Pill” as a reward for getting his hands on the Sunflower Manual.

It’s all played at a humorless pitch, a pretty cast in a pretty-looking movie that plays as pretty pointless.

Rating: unrated, action/fantasy violence, dismemberment

Cast: Yuqi Zhang, Tim Huang, Sammo Hung, Lu Xuan and Terence Yin.

Credits: Directed by Yiwei Luo, scripted by Jin Wong, based on a novel by Louis Cha. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:00

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Classic Film Review: Burt, Booty, Brigands and Brigantines — “The Crimson Pirate” (1952)

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Roger Moore

“The Crimson Pirate?” Yarrrrr, there’s a pirate picture with teeth!

Gore Verbinski borrowed from a parade of pirate movies when he concocted Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” franhcise, none more than this jaunty romp from 1952.

Warner Bros. gave star Burt Lancaster the keys to the bank for this 1952 Technicolor, Italian-location spectacle, with sailing ships and satin shirts and Burt and his lifelong pal and acrobatic partner Nick Cravat put on a stunt show worthy of its own theme park attraction.

It’s barely more piratical than those singing, dancing “Pirates of Penzance,” a sailing saga that’s silly down to its knickers — or pirate “petticoat breeches.” But boy oh, is it a hoot.

Lancaster, with Cravat, faces the camera in the film’s opening scene and addresses the crew and the audience.

“Remember, in a pirate ship, in pirate waters, in a pirate world, ask no questions. Believe only what you see. No, believe half of what you see!”

But those stunts? All that climbing and swinging and tumbling? Believe that.

Lancaster is Captain Vallo, who leads a crew of twenty or so swabs on his trusty barkentine, the Lydia, in the late (ish) 18th century. They’re doing what pirates did back then, preying on Spanish galleons and men-of-war.

How does a crew from a tiny, flying jib two-masted ship capture a three-masted 30-gun Spanish frigate? By playing dead, “a scurvy ship” taken in tow by the Baron Gruda (Leslie Bradley). Those corpses come to life when the timing’s right.

“You may be over-confident, Captain Vallo. There are 200 of the King’s marines aboard this vessel!”

“And only 20 pirates. That puts the odds slightly in my favour. Better surrender the ship!”

Captain Vallo polishes off this bravado with a toothy grin. Lancaster grins so much in this action comedy he’s practically a parody of his “image” — lithe, athletic, tossled reddish blonde hair and teeth.

The cunning captain hears what Gruda’s mission is and is all ears. (And teeth.) The Baron is traveling to some (fictional) islands in a sea that may or may not be Caribbean with orders and troops enough to put down a rebellion. The locals want independence, and a figure nicknamed El Libre may be close to providing it.

What if the pirate sails into port on the baron’s ship, takes over the baron’s mission and sells the baron’s guns and powder to the rebels? How about kidnapping El Libre and selling him to the baron in the bargain?

“Gather round, lads!” I tellya, there’s FLORINS to be make if we play all the angles.

But of course El Libre has a daughter, the fair Consuelo (Eva Bartok, fiesty). That has the skipper figuring that maybe there’s another angle to play here, one with curves.

The baron and assorted officials must be foiled and fooled, and a “by the (pirate) book” piratical first mate Humble Bellows (Thorin Thatcher, magnificent) must be placated or fended off.

“We got regular pirate business to settle. We got the plank, the culprit and the verdict. All we need’s a trial, an execution and a sentence!”

Vallo and his mute lieutent Ojo (Cravat) cheat death a dozen times, shimmy up masts and swing from ropes, tumble through town and dress in drag. All in a good day’s fun.

“This one can’t talk, and this one can’t keep quiet!”

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Movie Preview: Love, Longing and Song-catching in Appalachia — “A History of Sound”

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Roger Moore

Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star in this Bluegrass “Brokeback,” narrated by Oscar winner Chris Cooper (perfect) as an old man of the mountains who remembers that first great love — music — and the second, a fellow he met as they searched for and collected tunes in early 20th century Appalachia.

Looks like a mashup of Maggie Greenwald’s “Songcatcher” and many a same sex romance period piece, although I do love the alliteration of “Bluegrass ‘Brokeback Mountain.'”

“The History of Sound,” directed by Oliver Hermanus and scripted by Ben Shattuck, played at Cannes and opens Sept. 12.

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Documentary Review: Teens ease the transition to adulthood via The Outdoors, Sled Dogs and “Folktales”

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Roger Moore

It’s billed as “the best years of your life,” the teenaged Romain complains in “Folktales,” the new documentary about teens, sled dogs and the wilderness “Folk” schools of Norway. Socially maladjusted, shy and withdrawn Romain has figured out that the teen years have been over-hyped and oversold by Western culture.

“Everyone wants to be teenagers except for teenagers!”

And if you’re not coping with and thriving in your teens, how’s that transition to “adulthood” supposed to work?

Norway’s thesis — the modern world is a fast-paced/knowledge-packed overload on human brains that haven’t changed since the hunter-gatherer era. Why not offer teens a gap-year school (the first ones opened in the 1840s) where they fill the gap getting in touch with the wild, their ability to cope with it and handle the sled dogs necessary to survive above the Arctic Circle?

It’s hard to overstate just how warm and affecting this film, by “Jesus Camp” and “The Boys of Baraka” filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, turns out to be.

The kids aren’t so “troubled” with a capital “T” and this Pasvik Folk School on the Russian border that they attend isn’t Outward Bound. But take a bunch of willing students, socially awkward, sad or “lost,” make them care for, work with and bond with sled dogs with the edict “You are responsible for another living creature,” and keep the kids in the wild long enough and maybe they’ll “wake up your Stone Age brain” and grow up.

Hege is a clubbing but grieving city girl who lost her biker-father, but connects the idea of attending this school with outdoor experiences she experienced with her father.

Bjorn, a self-described “nerd” and “liar” (the film is mostly in English, with some Norwegian and Dutch with subtitles), frets over an inability to make friends and the lonely future that foretells.

And Romain is a Dutch Gen Z stereotype — disengaged, unwilling to even try to learn to build a fire, tentative about literally everything, even bonding with a dog.

That’s a social anxiety that this school can help him with, as dogs “unlock something inside a person,” one instructor observes. The dogs are “just a “method” of helping these teens “find a better version of yourself.” The idea is teach us “to be more human, maybe more patient.”

Nobody has to surrender their cell phone. But over the course of a school year that begins as the midnight sun summer ends, passes through “the long night” of winter and ends in spring, many will find the world they’re in a lot more interesting than anything digital at their fingertips.

Ewing and Grady don’t oversell the transformation these children — some of them plainly pretty privileged — go through. This isn’t a “scared straight” experience, rescuing kids “in the system” from a violent, disadvantaged future.

But watching unhappy, uncertain children grow in confidence as they learn, bond and then run loving, yipping, straining sled dogs is incredibly touching.

They camp out under the spectacular Northern Lights, cope with the consequences of not listening to their instructors about hats and gloves and setting up tents (snow will collapse one if you don’t do that right).

And then as Ewing and Brady pull back to show a parade of kids leading dog teams across the frozen forests of the north, one can’t help but be moved by the beauty of this wild and harsh place and the ingenius idea behind these schools and how much anyone could benefit from that experience.

Rating: unrated, some profanity

Credits: Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:46

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Netflixable? Sandler’s back in the Sandtrap — “Happy Gilmore 2”

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Roger Moore

Any hopes that Adam Sandler would use his Netflix contract to remake himself in movies like “Hustle” or “The Meyerowitz Stories”were dashed a couple of “Murder Mysteries” ago.

But he’s still doing numbers for the streamer, as his audience aged out of “going to the movies” long ago even if they never really outgrew him.

So why not a sequel to one of the movies that launched him, a title — like his “breakout” hit “Billy Madison” — that gave him the name of his production company, Happy Madison?

“Happy Gilmore 2” brings back his hockey-obsessed golfer who drives the ball with “rage,” which doesn’t really help him with his violence and anger management issues.

It’s a “gang’s all here” comedy that wallows in nostalgia for the original film, which came out 29 years ago. Sentimental curtain calls for performers from the original film who have since died — Carl Weathers and Bob Barker among them — clumsily blend with a parade of unfunny non-acting pro golfers, current and elder statesmen of the game, the usual crony cameos by the likes of Rob Schneider and Dan Patrick and sportscasters even older than Dan Patrick.

And then there’s all those Sandlers in the credits, his wife and kids failing to do much more than land a close-up or three in what plays like a “contractual obligation” outing from Team Sandman.

Of all the lazy, lame, vulgar and crude comedies this guy has churned out between more tolerable “Wedding Singer,” “50 First Dates” or even “Uncut Gems” pictures, this is right down there with “The Ridiculous 6” as among his laziest.

You barely have time to mutter “I wonder how they changed/killed-off the wife” from the first film as the opening credits play — a common failing of fragile ego leading men sequels — before Virginia (Julie Bowen) meets her demise.

To be fair, she still gets lots of screen time in flashbacks and fantasy sequences. Not as much as infamously undisciplined ex-golfer John Daly, who lives in Happy’s garage and joins him in his binge drinking.

Happy killed his wife with an errant tee shot, crawled into the bottle and lost everything. He now supports his four rowdy Boston Bruins-obsessed sons and aspiring ballerina daughter by stocking the produce section of his local market.

A running gag in the picture — Happy’s many “hide my drinking” flasks are concealed in everything from a fake cell phone to a cucumber, golf clubs and even a golf ball.

But he’s not picked up a club in over a decade when is forced back into the game — at 58 (Sandler’s real age) — to raise money for daughter Vienna’s (Sunny Sandler) prospective enrollment in a Paris Opera ballet school.

Sandler’s “Uncut Gems” writer and director Benny Safdie proves he has no gift for comedy playing Frank Manatee, a billionaire starting his own Happy Gilmore-inspired gonzo golf league, who tries to lure Happy out of his miserable “retirement” from the game.

Happy has to hit rock bottom — going to rehab sessions led by Ben Stiller‘s character from the first film — before he realizes his only hope of getting out of the financial hole is a comeback.

“At 58?”

A few awful, tipsy rounds and breaking a few driving range simulators later, he magically manages it. He’s back mingling with aged pros (Nicklaus, Trevino, etc), tactless TV interviewers (Kevin Nealon) and renewing old rivalries.

But where’s his nemesis, Shooter? The “third biggest golfer of the ’90s” (after Happy and “Tiger”)? He (Christopher McDonald) lost his marbles when he lost that gold jacket title to Happy back in ’96. It takes the intervention of golf-disrespecting Mr. Manatee to get Shooter out of a mental institution and back in Happy’s face.

The one moment that this movie came to life for me is when Sandler and McDonald renew their rivalry in a funny fistfight in a cemetery filled with graves of characters (and actors) who died after the first film came out.

Sandler’s one funny line comes when Happy has to half-hearted break-up a hockey brawl amongst his kids at the dinner table.

“Hey hey HEY! We fight in the BASEMENT, not at the table!”

The rest of the film is lame, recycled and unfunny jokes, penis and potty gags, uncommitted performances (Stiller and McDonald give it their all) and appearances by jocks, the descendents of dead actors and Sandler family (and a Stiller offspring, and another McDonald one) members.

It’s a film of “Look, it’s Dennis Dugan (as the “real” golf tour’s chairman),” who directed so many Sandler hits early in his career, or picking out which old golfer is which, trying to ID who this rapper or footballer is orwho that Sandler entourage member/hanger-on (Nick Swardson, etc.) might be.

Nostalgia only gets you so far, and whatever “feels” folks cling to from the original “upset the uptight golf world” original, it’s not enough to float this bloated corpse of a comedy.

Golf isn’t what it was back then, and neither are Happy or Sandler. So no “mulligans” for “Happy Gilmore 2.” A quintuple bogey or Archaeopteryx, a hole-by-hole disaster is still a disaster — in the trap, in the water, very late to the green and tucked onto Netflix where you can ignore it and find something better to watch.

Rating: PG-13, bits of violence, lots of profanity, potty jokes and mooning gags

Cast: Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, Christopher McDonald, Bennie Safdie, John Daly, Bad Bunny, Haley Joel Osment, several Sandler relatives, Steve Buscemi and Ben Stiller

Credits: Directed by Kyle Newachek, scripted by Tim Herlihy and Adam Sandler. A Netflix release.

Running time:

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BOX OFFICE: “Fantastic Four” has a Fantastic opening — $118 million

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Roger Moore

No doubt about it, comic book film fans are rooting for Marvel to finally deliver a “Fantastic Four” worth celebrating.

A more innocent, optimistic and juvenile franchise that has proven hard to start, restart and reboot, the thinking this time was to take it back to its ’60s origins/heyday and spend the money ($200 million?) on production design and effects and see what happened.

Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby are the “names” in the cast, and they can’t open a picture on “name” alone.

A $24 million+ opening night Thursday folds in to a beefy Friday to give “F4” a $56 million start to the weekend. The Numbers reports that the big start faded from earlier projections of a $125 million opening weekend, right in that “Superman” sweet spot. $118 million is the tentative tally now.

Reviews were hardly over-the-moon, and audience polling is in the 70% recommend range (not dazzling). I found it gorgeous but joyless, not entirely plotless but the narrative was more “We can do this…together” messaging than anything clever, witty or touching.

Marvel won’t be losing money on this one, as it’s opening big abroad as well — a $27 million take overseas, says Deadline.

These movies are formulaic juvenalia, more productions of “content” than movies, which is the reason you almost never see big names/big talents behind the camera directing them the way you did for a few Harry Potter pictures. Matt Shakman’s a TV director with “Wandavision” and lots and lots of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” credits. Not exactly “Move over, Scorsese.” Or Joss Whedon. Or Sam Raimi.

Just hiring somebody who can be on set for the actors while the producers/production call the shots and keep the pricey train running on time is no way to make something extraordinary.

Sucking all the oxygen out of the superhero cinema audience should mean that “Superman” will lose more than half of last weekend’s take and deliver another $24..86 million by midnight Sunday.

July 2 opener “Jurassic World: Rebirth” is on track for a $13 million weekend, and should and clear the $300 million mark as it exits July. “Superman” will soar past that same mark by next weekend.

“F1” is outperforming last weekend’s duds with a $6.2 million tally, good enough for fourth place.

Shame of shames, Paramount’s half-hearted “Smurfs” is besting “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” by $5.4 million to $5.1 million, putting the beaten-to-death kiddie cartoon in the Top Five one last weekend.

Both opened weak and are fading fast.

Seventh place goes to the “How to Train Your Dragon” remake ($2.8), eighth to an Indian film opening in relatively wide release — “Saiyaara” ( $1.4).

“Eddington” opened poorly and is already shedding screens, managing just $1.664 on its second weekend and last one in the top ten. It’s clinging to ninth place.

Among the weekend’s other wide-ish openings, the twisted “romance” “Oh, Hi!” (Really, Sony Pictures “Classics?”), will crack the top ten with around $1.1 million.

The documentary “Folktales,” a Pete Davidson horror (Comedy?) “The Home,” the bloody/land-stealing/founding-of-Israel drama “Shoshana” and the Italian coming-of-age drama “Diciannove” don’t figure to make as much noise as A24’s counter-programming bomb “Eddington” did last weekend.

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Movie Preview: Something to see in a cinema this weekend? The second trailer to the all-star “One Battle After Another”

Posted on July 25, 2025 by Roger Moore

Leo and Benicio, Sean and Wood Harris, Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall, ex-revolutionaries, a little longer in the tooth, reunite to fight an evil old foe.

And Alana Haim is here to remind us that sometimes Paul Thomas Anderson isn’t letting go of “Licorice Pizza” or his elementary school art teacher, whose daughter is the singer and sometime actor Haim.

Sept. 26.

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Movie Review: For these Gen Z daters, it’s all downhill from “Oh, Hi!”

Posted on July 25, 2025 by Roger Moore

The mating rituals, commitment phobia and communication issues of a much-maligned generation are sent up, with amusingly mixed results, in “Oh, Hi!” — a rom-com that almost goes for it and almost comes off before losing its nerve.

Writer-director Sophie Brooks pairs-up former child star Logan Lerman (“Percy Jackson,” “Fury,” TV’s “We Were the Lucky Ones”) and nepo baby Molly Gordon, who gets a story credit and moves from small supporting roles in “Shiva Baby,” “Booksmart” and TV’s “Animal Kingdom” into the spotlight as a young woman who misreads the signals from her new beau and doesn’t take that well. At all.

And frankly, you can see Iris’s point. She’s loaded up her vintage Jeep Cherokee for a fun weekend in the country, and Isaac seems totally present for the bubbly cute chatterbox who is his companion. Just two young New Yorkers having a sing-along to “Islands in the Stream” on the ride, basking in the upstate scenery, gawking at the over-equipped secluded AirBnB they’ve rented and get right down to sex before a single awkward silence can enter in the conversation.

We figure out it’s “early” in this “relationship.” He’s reading “Blindness” by Jose Camargo and she’s “not really a reader. I’m more of a movie lady.” But she probably didn’t see the film adaptation of that novel, either. “Casablanca” is more her speed.

They share their first impressions of each other — “I thought you were a f—boy.”And they exchange answers on “Have you ever had your heart broken?”

Isaac seems genuinely interested, cooking scallops for her before the evening’s second round of passion. She’s busted into the owners’ S&M stash because “Locked doors give me anxiety.” That may be the most Gen Z line in this.

So, who gets to tie up whom? Isaac agrees, and the novelty of the experience lifts their lovemaking. But his warning might have been the “ever had your heart broken” question and her answer to it. She has and didn’t take it well. “Insane urge to stab” comes up.

Handsome, politically connected Isaac is downright cavalier in dismissing the idea he might have had his “heart broken.” Bluntly contradicting Iris when she starts talking about how well things are going after three dates and “our first trip as a couple” seals his fate.

“I’m not really looking for a relationship right now.”

Those wrist cuffs and ankle cuffs he’s in? They’re not coming off. And as the story is framed within Iris’s call to her ride-or-die Max (Geraldine Viswanathan of “You’re Cordially Invited,” “Thunderbolts*” and “Seven Days”) — “I did a thing…I did something bad.” — we expect the worst.

As Iris decides to hold him captive to try and convince Isaac of their potential, the worst is worse than we fear.

“Oh my God, does he not like FRENCH toast?”

Brooks’ second feature (after “The Boy Downstairs”) doesn’t so much lose its edge as simply give it away. And as it does, the fun and the life sputter out of what might have been a skewering comedy.

Isaac comes off as a barely-sketched-in heel, topping off that with a cluelessness about the fairer sex and human emotions. His inability to “read the room” where Iris is concerned is worsened by insisting he’s just being “honest.” He finishes that off with the occasional “Gen Z Stare”at her reactions.

A generation that gets a bad rap for being fragile and easily hurt and rude by not considering other people’s feelings is sent up in this one character.

But Iris makes a call to her mother (Polly Draper of “thirtysomething”) about her disappointment and Boomer Mom’s advice is every bit as cliched and tone deaf as Isaac’s.

“Sometimes men don’t know what’s best for him.”

John Reynolds scores a chuckle or two as Max’s along-for-the-ride boyfriend, here to advise Iris about the legal problems tying someone up can put you in. And David Cross is the cranky “You kids can’t have sex there” neighbor with virtually nothing funny to do or play.

But the promise in this premise is Gordon’s Iris, a hapless young woman who feels victimized by everything men of her generation’s dating pool fear or simply have no interest in. Gordon made me think of her “Shiva Baby” co-star Rachel Sennott in Iris’s had-enough-attitude, pushing 30 and ready for a relationship, but just now figuring out that Peter Pan Syndrome isn’t just about the prankster, but about the Lost Boys women are waiting to grow up into men you might marry.

Brooks lets her character and her star down by backing away from that edge and going all softboy, like the guy her leading man is playing, as she does.

Rating: R, sex, nudity and profanity

Cast: Molly Gordon, Logan Lerman,
Geraldine Viswanathan, John Reynolds, Polly Draper and David Cross.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Sophie Brooks. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Running time: 1:34

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Movie Review: This “Fantastic Four” take their stumbling, humorless “First Steps”

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Roger Moore

Comic book cinema goes Mid Century Marvel for “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” a sleek and gorgeous looking reboot of this franchise that harks back to Fantastic 4 comic and TV cartoon’s heyday.

The film’s true star is production designer Kasra Farahani, who brings the ’60s back to life — on Earth 828 in the multiverse — with sweater vests, bouffants, crew cuts, ties, Homberg hats and jumpsuit fashions, minimalist plastic chairs, Edsels and their tail-finned ilk, all supplemented by the futuristic blessings of what four superhumans and their ability to broker world peace and cooperation might bring.

Yeah, somes cars fly. Mostly cop-cars, but hey…

These kid-friendliest comics tend to park any film attempt at relaunching Fantastic Four in the more juvenile PG/PG-13 realm — “entry level” comic book films for younger viewers. The more comedy the better, with jovial tough-guy banter from Ben Grimm/The Thing, punk put-downs by Johnny Storm the Human Torch and dorky supportive couplespeak from the married Mister Fantastic Reed Richards and his vanishing “Invisible Woman” wife Sue Storm.

But four credited screenwriters couldn’t find a joke if Jerry Seinfeld texted it to them. And our years of blaming the casts for the failure of these films should probably stop, as Pedro Pascal (Mister Fantastic has never been duller and Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm) never manages more than a moment or two of spark or empathy. They deserved better.

Joseph Quinn has too little that’s fun to say or do as Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach simply doesn’t register and seems utterly, humorlessly miscast as The Thing.

“Hey, say the thing,” “many ask, some of them joking. You know. The catchphrase. “‘What time is it?'”

“Stop it,” Ben says.

“It’s CLOBBERIN’ time,” you mean? “It’s just in the cartoon,” Ben grimly, bloodlessly reminds us.

Four years of a nation and a world with The Fantastic Four in it have earned them their very own ABC (in Living Color) TV special and appreciation as “the best of us,” us being the human race and Americans boldly embracing the future.

Reed and Sue discover they’re pregnant.

“Nothing’s going to be different.” “EVERYthing’s going to be different!”

Johnny and Ben are happy roommates in a spacious mid century modern penthouse.

And then this “herald” shows up, a Silver Surfer (Julia Garner, not-quite-recognizable in her CGI guise) to warn them that “The Devourer of Worlds,” “Galactus” is on his/its way as “Your planet is now scheduled for destruction.”

Make your peace with it, don’t fight it, you’re done for yadda yadda.

The Four must board the Good Ship Excelsior, find this Gallactus and, you know, “talk.”

We all know what that will mean. And four credited screenwriters know we know. So they barely put any effort into setting up the Big Confrontation, sleepwalking through the opening acts, perfunctorily cutting-and-pasting the suspense free middle act “build up.”

Plot elements, sci-fi inventions and set-pieces are borrowed from “Star Trek,” “Star Wars” and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, what we see on the screen is gloriously over-designed joylessness. This script had possibilities, and this far less “fantastic” four at the keyboards couldn’t see them or find the fun in this world, these characters or “Clobberin’ time,” when it finally arrives.

The only appropriate response is to throw up one’s hands at Marvel’s inability to get this cornerstone franchise right, with or without the kiddie pool touches.

Rating: PG-13, sci-fi action/violence, mild profanity

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Paul Walter Hauser, Natasha Lyonne, Julia Garner and Ralph Ineson.

Credits: Directed by Matt Shakman, scripted by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer, based on the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee comics. A Marvel Studios release.

Running time: 1:55

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