Given the sheer number of screenwriters and directors who have come and gone along the way, the comic book-to-motion picture journey taken by "Fantastic Four" has been fraught with enough obstacles to make that DNA-altering cosmic radiation storm encountered by the Marvel superheroes look like a gentle breeze by comparison. [...] 44 years after the quartet made its comic book debut, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing arrive on the big screen courtesy of a script officially credited to Mark Frost and Michael France, direction by Tim Story and about 800 visual effects shots. After all the fussing and fidgeting exerted in trying to nail just the right mix of comic book action, comedy and pathos, the movie emerges as a tone-deaf mishmash of underdeveloped characters, half-baked humor and unhatched plotting drenched in CGI overkill.

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