Siggghhhh, if it had only been meatier...

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 2000)

The X-men movie, like all good cheese, can only come into it's own if it is allowed to develop the meatiness and density that comes with maturity. While it was the most purely enjoyable summer theatrical release I have seen in years, I wish I wish I WISH it had just delved a little more into the world in which it was set! I'm not asking for a brooding diatripe on the injustices of society, but more mention of said injustices would have made these characters into characters, the likes of which I might have been a lot more interested in. My favorite line in the movie was Mystique's only line as Mystique: "It's people like you who made me afraid to go to school." Suddenly, we were not looking at a soulless villain headed towards a rightfully deserved death, but a real character who had had a rotten childhood and was taking it out on others in a confused attempt to get even. From that point on, I found myself overlooking the obvious heinousness of her crimes, and actually gladdened that she survived and went about righting the Senator's wrongs in his guise. It just takes one extra minute on screen to turn a the flattest character into someone you'd like to know... oh, and I didn't appreciate the way that the entire background to the film was explained in a five minute monologue, rather than slowly revealed throughout the film's course, and how such trifling details as Xavier's possession of a Blackbird, underground research facility, and "psychic-atrium" or whatever the hell that was were left completely unexplained. Another action sequence would have been nice too.