Review: Fantastic Four: The Musical

I wanted to make some comments on the Fantastic Four, since there’s a new movie featuring them coming out soon.  I don’t know exactly when and I’m not interested in it so I’m not going to  check right now.  Anyway, Fantastic Four was the FIRST comic of the Marvel age, created by the immortal Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.  Definitely one of the greatest creations ever.  And they’ve been interpreted in other media for quite some time also.  The new movie will be, I think, the fourth attempt at a version on the big screen.  I’ve never been able to get through any of the other 3 versions, and I don’t think the new movie looks good at all.  So I won’t talk about them.  Instead I am here to discuss: Fantastic Four: The Musical!

Yes, there really is a Fantastic Four musical available out there.  It’s part of season 4 of Arrested Development. If you don’t know, Arrested Development is the greatest television comedy ever created.  It had a tumultuous but award-winning run on Fox and was revived in 2013 on Netflix.  I don’t have Netflix, but I recently watched the season on DVD.  Anyway, the Fantastic Four are mentioned plenty in this series, including a reference to their strange low-budget 1990’s movie, a bit fictionalized to make ever more hilarious.  But the big payoff is the musical, performed by a bunch of patients in rehab and done without permission from Marvel or Disney or whatever.  It’s the brainchild of Tobias Funke, whose dream is to become an actor.  One spoiler: he’ll never succeed, he’s terrible.  But that’s what makes it hilarious.  The DVD extras include even more footage concerning the musical and how it was put together.  I never thought about how difficult it would be to choreograph something and make it look bad.

I could ramble on about Arrested Development and how wonderful it is forever, but I think I’ll end this post with a plead: please, everyone skip going to the movies and instead buy Arrested Development on DVD or download or whatever.  Please support the BEST Fantastic Four adaptation ever! It sure ain’t Lee and Kirby, but that’s what makes it so good.

Now I’m going to go get my rocks off…