'Fantastic Four': a two-hour trailer

I've never seen such a blatant ad for a sequel as the 'Fantastic Four' movie. Much as I like the cinema experience - I'll watch any crap as long as it's on a big screen in a darkened room - I didn't enjoy this overlong trailer one bit. Definitely the worst superhero flick since 'Hulk'.

That's all the film is: one long trailer. No story there; the most heroic thing they do is save a firetruck. And how fantastic can they be if it takes four of them to subdue someone who got his powers the same way?

Sad, since it explores the origin myth reasonably well, despite the usual problem of characters and situations conceived in an age where technology was all rocketships and rayguns instead of barcodes and Blackberries. And the craft - in both FX and scripting - is excellent. 'Fantastic Four' always seemed the most exotic of the superhero comics during my childhood, not because of their powers but at the way their human personalities and American settings were explored. (It wasn't superpowers that made Marvel heroes exotic to a British audience: it was the wisecracking meter of their speech and the way they drove big cars in their teens.)

But as a film, it just isn't that good. It's a bad idea for a film to think itself such a sure thing that a sequel is automatically forthcoming.