'Fantastic Four': Well, there are four

OF ALL the dust-ups arising from movie adaptations of comics, the dopiest has to be the beef regarding the casting of Michael B. Jordan in "The Fantastic Four."

Jordan is black, his character Johnny Storm was white in the Stan Lee comics, and some fans are upset.

They complain, hilariously, of verisimilitude problems.

Because the guy who travels to another dimension, lands on Planet Zero and acquires a mutation that gives him the ability to turn himself into a flaming missile can't be black.

That wouldn't be realistic.

Repeated and wholehearted endorsements of Jordan by Johnny Storm creator Stan Lee don't seem to help, and you wonder at the myopic fixations of the complainers - if they want to complain about something truly ridiculous in "The Fantastic Four," how about the fact that Miles Teller and Jamie Bell are still in high school?

Jamie Bell was teenager Billy Elliott 15 years ago.

Time itself has since become a teen.

Yet, Reed Richards (Teller) and Ben Grimm (Bell) are introduced to us in the new "Fantastic Four" at a high-school science fair, where Richards is demonstrating a device that transports matter into another dimension.

Right away the tone feels wrong: Dweeby contest judges dismiss the invention, even though it works. Is there some other, more dynamic invention at the fair? Something that turns poop into gold bricks? It's the first of many nonsensical events.

Richards' project does attract the interest of scientist Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey), who recruits Richards to join a team of geniuses who are building a larger, similar device at a nearby research center. There, Richards joins braniac Sue Storm (Kate Mara), the brilliant but disaffected Victor (Toby Kebbell) and jack of all trades Johnny (Jordan).

The setup to "The Fantastic Four" is frenetic and busy without creating much story momentum, or connecting the actors to their thinly drawn characters. Teller seems particularly stranded here, in a role that cuts him off from the humor and wit that are his strengths as an actor.

Things worsen as the movie gives itself over wholly to "action" - the crew tests its new matter transporter, visits another dimension and returns with mutations.

Richards is stretchy Mr. Fantastic, his friend Ben (Bell) is the rock-muscled Thing, Sue is invisible, poor Victor remains stranded in the multiverse.

None of this is fun in the least, nor is it meant to be. The 2005 movie version was a candy-colored romp pitched to children, so this reboot decided to differentiate itself by being grim and morose.

Mr. Fantastic's elongating limbs become an occasion for Cronenberg-ish body horror - we hear his tendons pop and see his bones push against his skin as they grow. The Thing is wounded and enraged at his condition, which I guess accounts for his stony expression.

The gravity accorded to all of this is hopeless. How seriously can we take a character named Von Doom?

In the end, "The Fantastic Four" reaches for a theme of family and togetherness, as the squabbling heroes unite to battle Victor back on Planet Zero, which ought to be a generic term henceforth applied to places that consist of nothing but special effects.