The movie sticks as closely as social and technological progress allow to the scenario familiar to generations of comic book readers. On the verge of losing funding, scientist Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), his best friend Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), future wife Susan Storm (Jessica Alba), and her hotshot kid brother Johnny (Chris Evans) venture into space to complete an experiment that goes awry, exposing them to the cosmic rays that transform them, respectively, into the stretchable Mr. Fantastic, monstrous Thing, force-field-wielding Invisible Woman, and flaming Human Torch.

Wisely, Fantastic Four spends most of its time on the irritating, endearing quartet and their varied reactions to their powers, saving the traditional battle against embodied evil -- in this case, Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) -- for a brief, affirming coda. After all, as every American comics fan knows, where X-Men is about tolerance, Hulk about self-control, and Spider-Man about responsibility, Fantastic Four is about family. Not the Hallmark movie, Kleenex commercial kind of family, but the button-pushing, real life kind. By genetics or cosmic rays, we are all bound to people we might or might not choose, and the movie competently finds the reassurance in watching the grumbling four pull apart and snap together over and again.

Clinging so closely to its origins in the last century leaves the movie with two dilemmas about the Thing, both of which it tries to duck. First, it must establish that the transformation renders Ben Grimm hideous. But while 1961's Invisible Girl could recoil in feminine fright at his grotesque visage, 2005's Invisible Woman will do no such thing, and instead of reinventing that moment for today, the movie exaggerates it via a ridiculous minor character. No real woman would dump her astronaut fiance without a word just because he came home a super-strong walking pile of orange rock, and the emotional shorthand embarrasses even this film. Sexual stereotypes are not what they once were. Second, Fantastic Four faced a choice about whether to include any hint of the wonderful 2002 addition of the Thing to the growing number of superheroes with concrete religious backgrounds. The Thing is Jewish, as co-creator Jack Kirby always intended, but which never appeared on the page across decades in which pop-culture kept all spirituality as generic as possible to avoid offending consumers. Religious stereotypes are also not what they once were, I would hope, and yet the movie disappointingly makes no gesture in that direction, failing sadly to seize its easy opportunity to suggest the normality of faith in general and Jewish faith in particular. Considering that X2: X-Men United (2003) offers an openly Catholic Nightcrawler, I'm tempted to conclude that Fantastic Four is either cavalier or cowardly by comparison.

But again, while the story could have offered more, surely the fun it provides is enough to justify its space on the screen. Conventional but vigorous, enthusiastic, and sometimes even cheeky, the adventure and relationships are fully sufficient to support a summer popcorn flick. Fantastic Four is disappointing only because the scale is now set by giants -- and those giant superhero stories took their first steps on the shoulders of the original tale of the Fantastic Four.