X-traordinary!

Rating: 8/10 (17 July 2000)

First off, I'll apologize right now for the cheesy summary line. I couldn't help myself :)
As for the movie, I was quite impressed with what, in my humble opinion, has to be the best comic book adaptation yet. Many fans of the comics were understandably worried about this movie. After all, we've waited a long time through rumours of it's production, stories about setbacks, even the occasional rumour that the attempt was being cancelled altogether (why does it seem so difficult to make a movie of a Stan Lee comic while DC comics are turning into movies left right and center?).
However, after seeing the first teaser trailers several months ago, the X-citement (sorry again) began to build. Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier? Ian McKellan as Magneto? How can you go wrong with that?
After seeing the movie, I was very impressed. After all, it's often difficult to adapt such larger-than-life comic book heroes and their trials and tribulations to the big screen. In comics and cartoons you can get away with much more, in the movies it seems to be much more difficult to suspend disbelief and yet retain the flavour of the comic. The movie did an admirable job by taking one of the older stories of the X-Men's fight against Senator Kelly's attempted pogrom against mutants and adapting it to reflect today's current woes of racism and prejudice.
The casting was terrific, from the aforementioned Stewart and McKellan roles to that of newcomer Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. He was spot-on as the surly, short-tempered maverick of the X-Men and he even looked the part, although with those sideburns, almost anyone can look the part. We even got a look at how Magneto came to be and why he'd be so twisted by the plight of mutants. It's a shame we couldn't see more character development for the other X-Men, but it's difficult to do when you've only got 2 hours to work with when the comic had several years to develop the history of these people. Perhaps the inevitable sequels will give us a better glimpse at how each X-Man came to be.
In all, I found the movie to be very enjoyable, I was even able to ignore for a little while the fact that it was shown in what has to be Prince George's worst theatre, worn-out seats, stained screens, overly salty popcorn, and an outdated sound system.
If you're a fan of the X-Men, go see it (although, I don't really have to tell you that do I?), if you're not a fan, you just may become one afterwards. I'm already looking forward to a sequel where we may meet some of the other X-Men, Hank McCoy (The Beast), Gambit, Morph, maybe even a cameo from Spidey himself. That is unless the Spiderman movie gets a shot in the arm from this release and swings its way into the theatres a little sooner.