Let me preface this review by saying it’s going to be incredibly hard to talk about without going into spoiler territory, because the entire plot of the film was hidden from all the trailers and marketing.

I really wanted to like this movie, I really did, but the writing was all over the place. There were so many plot holes that I almost regretted not bringing a notebook or something to write on before watching it. I wasn’t crazy excited about this in the first place because I’m really burnt out on Marvel stuff right now, but it still managed to let me down a bit considering the praise it is currently getting online. I’m going to start off with all of my negatives to end this review on a more positive note.

The first act, and in particular the first twenty minutes, lacked any focus or momentum. It was hard to see where the movie was going, and not in a good way either. In more of a, “What is this movie even about?” way. It dragged quite a bit. The threat is also introduced in the first act, and I have to say it felt a little bit random though I wouldn’t say it bothered me a ton.

Now I mentioned plot holes, and there sure are a lot of them. This mainly has to do with character motives and decisions. The entire fate of the universe revolves around a choice, and the decision that was made was incredibly selfish for a team that is serving as the “protectors of Earth.” Even if the decision was somewhat understandable, it made it impossible for me to empathize with two of our leads in particular. I get that they had to write it this way to get Galactus to do his whole “consuming planets” thing, but it still didn’t make much sense.

Then later on, the decision the team made earlier and what they decide to do to deal with Galactus heading into the third act don’t match up at all. This was the point where the film kind of lost me. You can only stretch my ability of disbelief so much, and it far exceeded that here.

Silver Surfer was also really wasted. She is pretty cool and intimidating at the beginning, but the more we start to learn about her, the less it makes sense why she is doing what she is doing. Her character was definitely one of the bigger disappointments I would say.

Of course, being an MCU film, there has to be comedy. I have a very particular taste in comedy that not even I have really figured out yet, but all of the humor made me cringe a bit. This could be just me though because a lot of my theater was chuckling at some of the moments so take that with a grain of salt.

And then there is the biggest disappointment - Galactus and the third act. It sets him up perfectly, and the sense of doom that is felt going into the climax of the movie was well done. But once he arrived, there wasn’t much tension and he didn't do a whole lot. There are two emotional payoffs in the third act. The first one I thought was okay, but somehow felt both predictable and unearned at the same time. The second one felt unnecessary and emotionally manipulative, and the way it ended made both me and a lot of the audience laugh because of how ridiculous and cliche it was. The third act was just really underwhelming as a whole.

Before I get to my positives, I do have two other things I didn’t really care for, but they are a lot more minor. One being that I really didn’t like Johnny Storm. I thought all of his gags were by far the worst pieces of humor in the movie, and I found him annoying. But it’s supposedly what he is like in the comics so maybe that’s not a fair criticism. The other one was that I don’t think this film showed off enough of the team’s powers. Other than Johnny Storm, no one really fully shows off their powers until the third act.

Now the positives. I do think this film looked very good, and the action we did get was pretty great. The CGI of the characters’ superpowers was really well done and I give massive props to the VFX artists for getting them right, as previous adaptations certainly didn’t - especially Reed Richards. I loved the retro-modern aesthetic, and even someone who didn’t realize this was taking place in a different universe would instantly recognize that it was within the first minutes.

The casting and our main leads were quite excellent too. I know I mentioned I couldn’t empathize with two of them, but the performances were undeniably nailed by all four of them. Reed Richards should make a great leader in Avengers: Doomsday.

If I had to pick a favorite thing about this movie, it would be Ben/The Thing. I loved the way they handled his character, and it was really the only real emotional weight I felt throughout the run time. I again can’t say much without spoilers, but they definitely handled keeping his character’s human side, and it actually was quite heartfelt if I’m being honest.

At the end of the day, this was by no means a bad movie. It just had too many writing issues for me to fully grasp onto it and get any more than just entertainment out of it.