Surprisingly good

Rating: Null/10 (21 February 2001)

I'd been looking forward to this movie for months before it opened, due to the casting of Ray Park alone. And then one day I woke up and suddenly realized, "Holy crud, this is going to be a *comic book* movie!" and until opening day I had an uneasy lump in the pit of my stomach telling me that all comic book movies are doomed to suck. But X-Men actually succeeded in breaking the curse and turned out to be rather intelligent and extremely engrossing. The acting is excellent on all accounts but one (that means you, Halle Berry), and combined with good special effects and great directing on the part of Brian Singer, manages to overcome a fairly weak plot (Magneto's going to unwittingly kill the world's leaders? Oh no! Why not just ask him to postpone another year until Dubya's in office and everybody is subsequently happy?). Overall, a great movie that's even managed to get me started watching the cartoon and reading the comics.