Very enjoyable piece of rubbish...

Rating: 7/10 (20 August 2000)

Hello, OK so I saw it last night and here's a quick run down on what I thought of it.
I'm gonna address many of the points people have made in the many reviews I've read for this film one by one as to whether I agree or disagree with them. OK, here goes:
Q Is the film enjoyable? A Yes, I found it very enjoyable, why? Cos it was nicely directed, had a few funny jokes in it, it had the superbly hot Famke Janssen (or is it 2 Ns, one S) wearing nice night tops, Halle Berry's wonderful breasts (yup, subtlety there) and even little Anna Paquin has grown up to be a rather attractive large breasted young thing. Top-notch birdage all round. Oh and of course Mystique has a fantastic body, shame it was blue and scaly.
Q Does it screw up all the X-Men timeline stuff? A Oh yes, all the storylines the film is based on have been screwed to b****ry. Examples include the fact that Cyclops and Iceman were supposed to be the same age and should have joined the academy at the same time, however Cyclops is a mid twenties member of the team whilst Iceman is an adolescent school boy in the classroom. But hey, I didn't actually care much cos I've forgotten almost the entire plot from the comics and it was only Alex that reminded me of most of it.
Q Are the FX nice? A Oh yes, lovely stuff. Nice CGI, nice Wolverine claws, yeah, t'was good.
Q Is the plot of the film too lightweight and does it think its being all serious and great when its actually not? A Yup, the plot stank. Overall premise was fine (after all that's the whole point of the X-Men) but it had a lot of holes in it. And it all seemed a bit TOO much like the first film of three. For example, The Matrix knew it was gonna be a trilogy but it answered pretty much most of what it asked. However this film has dream sequences, underdeveloped characters and whatnot and its handled in blatantly obvious "we're gonna build on this in the next one" manner. OK, so that fine but it was there for everything. Nothing was explained!
Q How well is Wolverine used? A I thought he was pretty well used. He was nice and aggressive and didn't really do all that much really but what he did was nice, like the first time you see his claws and he pins this large bloke against a wall with two of them and slowly extends the middle one towards his neck whilst slicing the bartender's rifle in half with the other hand. Wolverine has the best lines from the film (the best of which I would love to spoil for you but I'll let you hear it for yourself when we go see it :) ) on both the macho front and the humour front. Oh and there is a beautiful piece of direction when he's swinging round a prong on the Statue of Liberty by his claws and the camera follows his claws round all four sides, spinning slowly until its completely cut off. OK so I can't explain it but you'll like it when you see it Leigh :)
Q Is Ray Park a gay stank ass? A NO! For the first time in cinema history we hear Ray Parks real voice! YAY! It's just a normal London accent actually, but it suited Toad well enough. Oh and I did like his character cos his fight scene was very nicely done and he even did a Darth Maul joke by grabbing a metal bar that was holding a lift open, spinning it in the exact same way he did with the light sabre and doing the arm to the side stance, lifted directly from Episode 1. Oh but instead of a snarl he does this really cheeky grin and it was really nicely done. Could have been a really crap joke but he pulled it off well. He doesn't get to do much martial arts but being able to jump really, really high he does some lovely Blade-esque landings. :)
But anyway, this as turned out to be a far too long review so I'll sum up now. X-Men is a very lightweight movie, the plot sucks and the timeline it's based on goes completely out of the window. But it is a very nicely directed film, the acting is mostly very good (and yes, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stuart do add the required gravitas to their roles, any scene with both of them in really did sparkle) and there were a few very funny little jokes in it (like Wolverine using the middle claw to flip off Cyclops). So in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it (Adam and Alex thought it sucked by the way) and will, hopefully, be seeing it again and yes, it shall be DVD'd.
Score: 7.5/10 (so I'll give it a 7 on imdb)
Oh yeah and it has this one really superb death scene in it where a bloke literally melts away to nothing, it was sweeeeet.