Been there, done that...

Rating: 6/10 (4 August 2000)

It was no doubt daunting to the makers of "X-Men" that there were hundreds of thousands of X-MEN fanatics who were as likely to vilify it's latest incarnation as embrace it. Fans of the comic book need not have worried; this flick will not disappoint. But those countless millions who don't know an X-man from a Y-chromosome may feel otherwise. For all its earnestness and technical competence, "X-Men" is a classic case of cinematic 'deja vu'. Whatever vivacity Tim Burton was able to inject into 1989's wildly popular "Batman" has long since dissipated--witness the disappointing reception to its last sequel and the recently cancelled resurrection of the "Superman" franchise. "X-Men" does little, if anything, to raise the bar for the genre--it's little more than a 'good mutants versus bad mutants' tale with a little quasi-racism thrown in for flavor. Plus, too little is made of the oppression suffered by mutants in a mortal's world, just as too little is made of the too-few characters in this plotline. Yet even after apparently distilling the "X-Men" pantheon of mutants into a handful of characters for the movie version, scant use is made of the many serviceable actors hired. It's seems ironic to see so much one-dimensionality in a movie based on a minimally two-dimensional source. But the in-bred success of "X-Men" will no doubt beg a sequel, not to mention inspiring even more comic-borne adaptations. Come to think of it, "Spider-Man" starts production this Fall.