true to the spirit of the comic book

Rating: 10/10 (11 July 2000)

OK, so I'm a big fan of the X-Men comic book and have been reading it for over 20 years. I was skeptical of this film: I've been criticizing its casting from the beginning (except for Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier -- that's perfect casting). So I watched with trepidation and was pleasantly surprised. It works. And most of the cast is just right. The story mucks about with some of the mythology, missing some major X-Men like Colossus, Nightcrawler, Angel and the Beast (and Iceman is just a kid in the film), but so what? The action scenes work, the story is true to the comic and both Hugh Jackman and Anna Paquin are absolutely excellent (and they're the main stars, so you know you're doing well when your two leads are good). Most of the supporting cast is fine, except for Halle Berry as Storm (weak) and James Marsden as Cyclops (bland) -- plus he looks way too young to be Famke Janssen's love interest. But even rather scrawny Ian McKellen makes a good Magneto. So, it's pretty good, not great, but pretty good and this summer (which has been very, very bad for movies), what more can you ask for?