Fun but not great

Rating: 6/10 (19 July 2000)

I was looking forward to seeing X-Men not because I expected an excellent movie. In fact, I wasn't sure and didn't really care either way as to whether it was good or bad; it just looked fun. I've never been a huge X-Men fan, but I'm familiar with most of the characters and major plot points since I used to read American Comics a while back. With most comic book movies being really bad, I didn't have very high expectations for X-Men. I'm glad I didn't. Otherwise I might have been disappointed.
As far as just being a ton of fun to watch, X-Men doesn't disappoint. There's some great visuals and direction, and then there's also some cheesy stuff. I supposed I'll talk about visuals first. The special fx weren't too bad, but it looked like they needed a higher budget. Some of them were really cool. The wind effects of Storm and Cyclops's optic blast were cool, as well as some of the other mutant power stuff. I was skeptical of Mystique's look at first, but I found that I really liked it in the movie. But any scene with characters flying just looked cheesy and rigged, and the statue of liberty fight scene was just...weird. The slo mo just didn't work in that context.
As far as the characters go, the ones that were focused on were in character and looked pretty good. Wolverine was great, and I ended up liking him more than I ever did in the comics for some reason. Cyclops was the dork that he is, and of course Professor X and Magneto were well done. Rogue was ok, despite the fact that she was much younger than X-Men fans are used to. But Storm just....did nothing. She looked scared most of the movie, and she was way too much of a background character. (Although if they had concentrated too much on every character it would have been too loaded with complicated details and would clutter the story.) And she had the worst line of dialogue I've ever heard, which many people have already complained about. That line was trying so hard to be cool that it just came out all wrong. Sabertooth was pretty bad as well. I'd have to say he was the worst. I hated the lion roars and the fact that he barely spoke. He wasn't all that savage either, and the whole Wolverine/Sabertooth rivalry thing was ignored in the movie. I realize that the movie was made for the masses and not just for X-Men and comic book fans, so they did a commendable job translating it even if it's missing details.
Oh, the soundtrack was just bad.
There's not much more I can think to say about this movie. It was good for a comic book live action movie. I still think the best medium for comic book movies would be animation, since the characters are drawn characters to begin with, but unfortunately mature cartoons don't go over too well in this country. Despite the few problems the movie had, it was ok overall and I had a good time.