If there's any buzzword now attached to comic book adaptation, that word is "dark". Everything has to be dark. The new Batman is, of course, so dark you can hardly see your hand in front of your face. The dark knight is motivated by emotions not so far removed from the seething serial killer. Bryan Singer's X-Men are pretty dark, their story being sensationally ignited by a fantasy at the gates of Auschwitz. And Sam Raimi's account of Spider-Man shows the hero's superpowers as virtually an extension or amplification of his private fallibility. So it's a huge relief to settle down with Vanilla Diet Coke, plus nachos and dip, to a thoroughly enjoyable and unpretentious summer movie about superheroes that isn't freighted with loads of self-conscious darkness.
Tim Story's Fantastic Four restores to the superhero genre what Marvel Comics' supremo Stan Lee was always very good at: comedy. The Fantastic Four are an all-American family with a common purpose, not so far from the Partridge Family, or perhaps the Brady Bunch, or the Tracy family who run International Rescue. This is a created family (some of whom are actually related) yoked together by events.
Dr Reed Richards, nicely played by Ioan Gruffudd, is the paterfamilias, with dabs of grey hair at the temples. It is one of the results of the terrible accident that messes with his DNA and gives him his special powers. He is the scientist, astronaut and entrepreneur whose quixotic adventures in thinking outside the box have allegedly reduced him to penury - although he does have the most extraordinary pad: like a giant atelier for visionary scientists. He has recently broken up with scientist Sue Storm, played by Jessica Alba, from Sin City: Hollywood's new white-hotter-than-white-hot star. Sue is now working as an aide to the evil industrialist Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon). Sue is also his sort of girlfriend, though their relationship has a brisk, almost Victorian chastity, much cooler than Julia Roberts and Andy Garcia in Ocean's Eleven.
Richards persuades Von Doom to bankroll a rocket mission into space that will investigate man's DNA in the ionosphere - or something. With him on board, aside from Von Doom and Sue, will be Sue's feisty brother Johnny Storm, a sports-car nut and extreme-sports enthusiast played by Chris Evans, a young actor with a passing resemblance to our own Jack Davenport. And of course there is the big lovable lunk Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), to whom Sue is forever giving sisterly hugs.
The still un-Fantastic Four run into a cosmic radiation storm whose approach they horribly miscalculate - though weirdly, the movie does not make it clear whose fault this is. Instead of giving them terrible illnesses it of course turns them into Übermenschen of various sorts, though only Johnny's new abilities are an unmixed blessing: by shouting "Flame on!" he converts himself into a flying ball of fire. Ben Grimm turns into a grotesque but very strong monster, and Reed's limbs go all stretchy. Feminists and non-feminists alike must absorb the Fantastic Four's most troubling paradox: having been admitted to the story on the grounds of her beauty, Sue Storm's superpower is to be invisible.
The four of them pal up in Reed's enormous science pad and convene in the kitchen for sitcommy squabbling. And thank heaven, none of it is dark! Being a superhero is great! It's fun! Nobody feels compelled to apologise for any déclassé comic book origins with lots of gloom or spurious psychological agony. The quartet become celebrities, a concept genially endorsed as being pretty cool. They have no secret identities or tense concealments, thus halving the grief of the superhero's traditional working life. Why do all these other superheroes bother with secret identities anyway? Their celebrity status does not obviously compromise them either as crime-fighters or ordinary people; they cheerfully accept the name given to them by the media - the Fantastic Four - and take the media's assessment of them at face value. When Johnny gives them their names: Human Torch, Mr Fantastic, Invisible Woman (not "Girl" any more, thank you!), and the Thing, it is at the request of a TV reporter.
Of course, there's a tinge of darkness, a kind of emotional wattage failure, when Ben Grimm's fiancée returns his ring, because she can't live with the idea of finding an ugly craggy monster attractive. (Hasn't she heard of Nick Nolte?) But he soon gets a new blind girlfriend - like a sort of good Frankenstein's monster. Ben is not like the Hulk in Ang Lee's movie, forever brooding and glowering over his own rage. He is a refreshingly unreflective superhero, preferring not to spend much time gazing at his rocky navel.
There's a terrifically enjoyable scene on a New York bridge as the Thing's attempt to rescue a suicidal man turns into a spectacular auto pile-up and all-out security situation. Johnny bursts into flames, Sue bursts out of her clothes (while invisible) and Reed bursts out of his inhibitions, elasticating madly to rescue a fire-fighter. The Four seem to spend most of their time smiling shyly and surrounded by a circle of good-natured onlookers and emergency workers standing back at a respectful radius, not misunderstanding the Four or booing them or thinking they're bad - but just cheering them wildly. What a tonic!
