This time around, the Fantastic Four battle a mysterious henchman (blandly voiced by Laurence Fishburne, who has hopefully spent his quick paycheck from this film well) from outer space who devours planet after planet... on a silver surfboard. See what I mean about the silliness? Even for a comic book adaptation, this is all very juvenile and over the top. Like the original, Rise of the Silver Surfer mainly plays for laughs. More often than not, the Four’s superpowers are used to generate sight gags rather than to save the world. The obligatory action scenes also remain uninspired (save for an impressive chase sequence between Chris Evan’s Johnny Storm and the Silver Surfer) and forced. What rescues the film from being an outright disaster is its self-awareness. After the success of the first film, the cast and crew seem much more comfortable now in their direction. As characters, the Fantastic Four undoubtedly lack the dramatic depth of superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man, but director Tim Story wisely adopts a lighthearted and comical tone to compensate. Unfortunately, most of the jokes fall flat (although to be fair, it’s clear that the writers are targeting younger audiences here), but at least the film is never pretentious.

Rise of the Silver Surfer is essentially a more confident rehash of the original film. It boasts the same bad performances (Ioan Gruffudd’s Mr. Fantastic really is the most unintentionally boring superhero in recent memory), cheesy one-liners, and mediocre special-effects. For better or worse, however, the Fantastic Four franchise has managed to carve out its own niche among other comic book films and one can at least respect Rise of the Silver Surfer, if only for having the guts to stick to the first film’s campy formula.