Despite the complaints and protestations of many professional critics, my wife and I went to see the latest Fantastic Four movie this afternoon.  Reviews that I have seen have been mixed.  Stephen Hunter, of The Washington Post, declared the movie a snore fest.  Others have had similar critiques.

On the other hand, the reviewer for AOL (sorry, didn't catch the name), and the reviewer that was published via The Washington Times, was a bit more kind to the film and both seemed reasonably enough pleased to take a chance on seeing the movie.

My wife and I both enjoyed the movie quite a bit.  It wasn't as overly action packed as Spiderman 3 tried to be, and though the effects for the surfer do harken back to those used in the 2nd Terminator movie (with Robert Patrick in the liquid metal type effect), they worked just fine for the Silver Surfer.

Granted, I was not a dedicated fan boy of the Marvel Universe when I was young, but I was a big fan of the very cheesy Fantastic Four TV series (cartoon back in the middle of the last century ).  I liked the characters a lot, and enjoyed the stories.

Rise of the Silver Surfer brings back Victor Von Doom, and introduces us to the Silver Surfer as well as the surfer's 'boss' Galactus.  The representation of Galactus is changed pretty dramatically for this movie, but it still works as necessary to convey a large and very powerful entity that is posing grave danger to the Earth of the Fantastic Four.

There's plenty of humor in the movie, lots of just right special effects, and generally a fun time to be had by all.  If you are on the fence about seeing the movie, don't be.  It's worth going to catch on the big screen and at roughly an hour and 45 minutes, it won't take away that much of your valuable time if you do go see it.

I should add that the movie does include a good bit of product placement and those that are easily offended by the thought of such stuff will probably grow tired of it quickly, but then again the movie also pokes fun of product placement and corporate sponsorship at times too. Again, to me it was fun and enjoyable, and not offensive. Some folks may not think that is the case though and that is just fine. To each their own.