“Well, it’s not as bad as the first one.”

That may sound like faint praise, but it’s literally the best compliment anyone can pay to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Despite a strong box office performance, after the original Fantastic Four movie from 2005 left such a bad taste in the mouth of fans and critics alike, expectations were low for the sequel. Of course then they had to come out with an excellent trailer to get our hopes up and seeing The Silver Surfer in action got the geek nation whipped up in a frenzy.

Oh, how they toy with our emotions.

For the most part, the film lives up to the hype. Finally able to set aside the clumsy exposition requirements of the first film, director Tim Story drops us square into the middle of the everyday life of our heroes. Each of them have settled into the roles of super-powered protectors, but not as media figures. As Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) and The Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba) prepare to walk down the aisle for the fourth time, the media instrusion makes it easy to see why there have been so many postponements.

This time, however, the interruption occurs at a more… cosmic scale – The Silver Surfer.

While most of the good moments with the Surfer were used up in that trailer that cause all of our attention, his exciting chase with The Human Torch (Chris Evans) sets the rest of the movie into motion. The Surfer is flying all over the world, causing weather disruptions and undertaking massive terraforming to prepare Earth for the consumption of his “master” – the devourer of worlds, Galactus. It then becomes the peroggitive of The Fantastic Four and a particularly abrasive Army General (Andre Braugher) to catch up to The Surfer and neutralize him.

Everything The Surfer does is poetry in motion and a joy to watch on screen. Credit there can be given to Peter Jackson’s WETA Workshop in New Zealand and motion-capture performer Doug Jones. You don’t know Doug Jones, but you’re probably familiar with his work as the amphibian Abe Sapien in 2004’s Hellboy and most recently as the gruesome Pale Man and the titular Faun in last year’s Pan’s Labyrinth. His stoic, elegant performance as The Surfer speaks volumes although Jones himself does not. Laurence Fishburne provides his voice.

It’s when the Surfer is not on the screen that the movie begins to lose focus. Much of the movie is spent on The Invisible’s Woman insecurities surrounding her marriage and the ability to lead a normal life. The Human Torch is also the center of a sub-plot where he attempts to grow out of his showboating ways and become more of a team player. Meanwhile, Michael Chiklis as The Thing is almost completely left out. Useful only, it would seem, for crashing through walls or lifting heavy things.

While it probably isn’t easy to give equal time to each of the characters problems or focus on their fantastic powers, what does make it into the movie feels less like actual character development and more like details screenwriters Don Payne and Mark Frost tossed in to keep the movie from being a string of globe-trotting action pieces. But if they wanted to add something significant to the movie, they could have completely dumped Julian McMahon returning as Dr. Doom and shown us more of The Surfer and the sacrifice he made before becoming the herald of Galactus. As it is in the movie, his origin is delt with in a few line exchanges and they show us nothing. Doom’s presence in the movie felt like tacked on just to keep continuity with the first movie. They could have had him sit this one this one out and been totally fine.

A lot of movies this summer have been tagged for being too long. Rise of the SIlver Surfer is actually a movie that probably could have benefitted from another 20 minutes. Briskly burning through it’s 90 minute running time, I sometimes felt that I was watching the movie on fast forward. Or, perhaps, like I was just being shown storyboards brought to life. Director Tim Story’s history as a commercial and music video director is transparent on screen. His style lends itself well to our sound-bite culture. The action sequences are punctuated well with visuals that would work great for a trailer as a promotional photo, but rarely does it add up to anything substantial.

Equally medicore are the performances. While Jones does well with The Surfer and Evans captures the hubris of The Human Torch, both Andre Braugher and Jessica Alba are entirely over the top, Ioan Gruffudd far to flat and the film’s greatest acting resource – Michael Chiklis – is completely wasted.

What the movie does right, it does spectacularly. But it’s faults are equally spectacular. This makes the movie more balanced than it’s predecessor and more enjoyable, but, ultimately, not as satisfying a ride as it could have been.