Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Fantastic Four

The comic series that launched Marvel Comics continues to struggle to create a viable film franchise with the latest superhero reboot, the dismal re-sourced origin story at the heart of Fantastic Four.

Opting for younger versions of the comic book characters, Fox’s screenwriters have serious issues bringing this superhero team to life without dragging its fee through cheesy dialogue, predictable events and a unnecessarily lengthy build-up to the final battle. Young stars Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell don the guises of Dr. Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Sue Storm (Invisible Woman), Johnny Storm (Human Torch) and Ben Grimm (The Thing) respectively. While these actors have delivered some strong performances in the past, this film didn’t test their abilities and subsequently, they fell into tedious stereotype, which only exacerbated the film’s weaknesses.

Director Josh Trank may claim that the film’s biggest problems are the studio’s edit, the mediocre effects, bumbling performances and lack of cohesive tone are as much his problems as anything. An edit may be able to make a weak film better, but the foundation has to be there or even the best editor in the world isn’t going to be able to turn the sow’s ear into a silk purse. This film’s failures are systemic and there’s plenty of blame to go around.