Not bad, but the top 250? Surely not.

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2000)

Hmmm, I haven't been hanging around this site much lately, but I must admit some surprise at how highly this film is rated. I mean, I thought I'd have a higher opinion of it than most people because I used to read the comic book (which probably gives me a slight prejudice on the matter). Well, anyway, that said...
X-Men is not a bad film, but man, they could have done a lot more with it. I mean, here you have a movie that's basically guaranteed a profit, yet it's only a little longer than an hour and a half. I mean, there's not much character development here - for the most part at least; Wolverine and Rogue fans are in luck. However, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (as Mystique) has one line and Ray Park (as Toad) has two. Couldn't they do better than that? And Tyler Mane (Sabretooth) doesn't speak much either. In fact, outside of Wolverine and Rogue, Professor Xavier and Magneto are the only characters with much of a personality (flat as they might be), and yet Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen seem underused in the parts (especially Stewart). By the way, don't think that means there's lots of action because there isn't.
Which isn't to say that I didn't like the film. What action scenes it has are fairly good and the plot is passable enough. There simply didn't seem to be much to X-Men. When it ends, you feel like you've watched the first episode of a new TV series. And you have, basically, because you can pretty safely bet they'll be at least one sequel. 7/10