And it had Stan Lee in, so that made it cool.
Who the hell decided we needed another frickin' reboot?
What's that? Darker and grittier you say? Well, that makes everything OK...
And if it had have been, it might have done.
Instead we spend more than half the film explaining how the 4 got together, leaving barely any time left for the big battle at the end.
Who's big idea was that?
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let's start at the start, where Reed Richards is at school at meets Ben Grimm and they do experiments in the garage.
Then let's leap ahead to the pair of them getting picked up by the mysterious Baxter Institute at the school's science fair - and let's try to overlook the fact that, even though both of them worked on it, only Reed gets the golden ticket.
And don't ask why Pa Storm was taking his daughter Sue on a work jolly. He just was, OK?
So now we're at the institute, only the genius Victor Von Doom is sulking in a lock-up somewhere.
Not to worry, Pa Storm has a word and we're all good.
We have our four (once Johnny has stopped playing with cars). Hurrah.
Only that's not the four, so we have to stretch the plot even thinner to shoe-horn in Ben at the back end.
And I could live with the huge backstory if the dialogue was snappy and the actors (star of Whiplash Miles Teller as Reed, Kate Mara as Sue, Michael B Jordan as Johnny and Jamie Bell as Ben) looked like they believed in what was happening.
But even they are clearly struggling.
And there are so many questions that go unanswered.
Like where did Doom get his cloak from? And how did they get that stretcher out, along with the 12-strong team?
Let's be clear about this. This is a superhero movie.
Which means we want a quick 'how they all got there' followed by lots of flying about, big fights, massive explosions, and oodles of zip and pizzazz.
And humour.
Not just the bit early on when Reed blows the whole town's lights. More.
Check the books. There's banter. It's fun, dammit!
I'm sure somebody somewhere has a very good reason as to why this film exists, but as someone who walked out into the daylight wondering what else I could have done with the time I'm at a lost.
It's not a new take.
It's not even a fun take.
It's a tedious re-telling of a story we all know that lacks energy and enthusiasm.
And Doom's really crap. A reject from AI doesn't make for a bad baddy, OK?
Thankfully it hasn't set the box office alight, so we should be spared a sequel.
Pardon?
Oh nuts.
Well, let's just pray it's better than Rise Of The Silver Surfer.
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