Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (PG)
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Caution: potential spoilers.

This is the sequel to Fantastic Four. It's perhaps slightly better than the first movie... and I did like the first movie slightly better than critics did. But even so... it's not great. Definitely decent, but not great.

Um... So, Sue and Reed are supposed to get married, but their wedding keeps getting postponed because of all the superheroing they have to do, and stuff. Meanwhile, Ben is happily dating a blind woman named Alicia Masters (Kerry Washington), who he met in the first movie. And Johnny is happily dating a string of hot chicks (though there are a couple of scenes in the movie where it seems like he might be getting tired of superficial relationships). More importantly, there are bizarre anomalies happening around the world, and the Army wants Reed to build a sensor to find out what's behind it. This could interfere with his latest attempt at marrying Sue. Eventually, Johnny has an encounter with the being that's causing all the trouble, a silvery alien riding a silvery surf board.

Meanwhile, Victor Von Doom has his own encounter with the Silver Surfer (Doug Jones/Laurence Fishburne), who radiates cosmic energy, similar to what gave them all their powers in the first movie. And it seems to heal Victor, now. Later, the Army gets Victor to work with Reed to come up with a way of stopping the Surfer. This, predictably, is a bad idea, because of course Victor just wants to get the board for himself, which is the source of the Surfer's power. Meanwhile, Sue befriends the Surfer, and learns that he has no choice but to serve the "Destroyer" which is coming soon to eat the planet, basically. She tries to convince him he does have a choice, though. Oh, also I should say that Johnny's earlier encounter affected his own powers, so that now whenever he touches one of his teammates, they swap powers.

And... the Army people in the movie are led by General Hager, who doesn't like Reed. And there's an Army captain named Frankie Raye, who Johnny hits on, but of course she's not interested. And... Stan Lee makes one of his usual cameos, except this time he actually played himself, which I thought was a neat twist. And Brian Posehn played a minister in a couple of different scenes where Sue and Reed were trying to get married. So that was fun. And of course Sue, Alicia, and Frankie were all easy on the eyes (as were any of Johnny's dates, though honestly I have no idea if we saw him with one woman a few different times, or different women every time). Um... so, the special effects were decent, there were some reasonably funny bits, and... that's about all I can think to say. Except that it seems pretty weird an event this huge wouldn't cause any other superheroes in the world to get involved. Presumably the Fantastic Four aren't the only ones out there. Not to mention the fact that the U.S. seems to be the only country trying to save the world. But whatever.