X-MEN PG-13
Starring Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, and Patrick Stewart
Eric says: ****** (6)
I loved Blade. It embodied all that could be great about comic to big screen. I thought that Spawn lowered itself too much by going for that always-safe PG-13. Needless to say, I was very intrigued to see how the newest conversion would fare. Enter Professor Xavier.
After an opening title sequence painfully similar to that from Fight Club, we jump headfirst into... exposition! Exposition? And back-story, and scenes setting the background for 3 of the characters. I must honestly say that (and I'm no dolt) I didn't care a bit, not so soon. Remember The Matrix, of course you do. When Trinity kicks ass in that first, groundbreaking scene, we get pumped, hooked. That sets the foundation that would carry us through later scenes of exposition . X-Men lacks any such hook.
The director, the same guy who gave us The Usual Suspects, has here tried too hard to make this a "serious" movie. More drama than action, scene after scene falters. Again, not that there's anything wrong with drama, especially with the always capable Stewart and McKellen. But this was the wrong setting for it. Instead, the characters were simply drained of any color (literally, too - their garb had changed into cooler leather coordinates). Even supposed dark and serious comics have a certain brooding energy. This didn't.
The main reason to venture to a movie house to see this one would be Hugh Jackman. The former unknown Aussie stage actor breathes some much needed life into X-Men with his wonderful embodiment of Wolverine. His performance sparkles while others fall flat. When Wolvie is not in a scene, it's about as interesting as the CBS show Big Brother. Never have I seen as much money wasted as when they paid Halle Berry as Storm, a weather-controlling mutant. Sure, she isn't given much, but she does nothing with the bones that she is thrown. The only joy I derived from her performance is when she gets kicked in the chest and thrown across the room directly into a concrete wall, I felt like shouting, "Now YOU know how the victim of a hit-and-run feels!"
I'd say that the story is unimportant, but it's all that this film has. A bad mutant (Ian McKellen) who had a rough childhood (like Auchwitz rough) gathers other unsavory mutants like the shape shifting Mystique (a wonderful, game Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, putting up with a lot for a supermodel), the creepy Toad (Ray Park, best known as the Headless Horseman when he was headless in Sleepy Hollow and Darth Maul - watch for a slight homage to Darth when he handles a steel bar much like a double-ended light sabre), and the behemoth Sabretooth. Their plan is human genocide, or mutanticide. The only ones that can stop them (yawn) are the telepathic cripple Professor Xavier (Stewart), the laser-eye-beam-emitting Cyclops, the aforementioned Storm, Wolverine, Rogue (Anna Paquin sans piano doing little acting considering her considerable screen time), and telepath-in-training Jean Grey (the lovely Janssen). What we are left with resembles a heavy-handed Star Trek (the Shatner years) plot about tolerance and understanding others' differences..
Sadly, though, I was looking for incredible fight scenes and oh, I don't know, action instead. The fight scenes were few and far inbetween, and were over much too soon. Do do yourself the honor, though, of seeing Jackman before he becomes a star, because he will.
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