Exerted but Failed

Rating: 6/10 (17 July 2011)

Honestly I can't follow the high ratings of this movie. That maybe a generation's problem, as I'm in the mid of my 40s and have other demands of a great movie. However, although I'm an old sack, I liked the last four X-Men movies (including Wolverine) more than First Class.
And this is mostly because I missed most of the actors, first of all Ian McKellen (Magneto), Patrick Stewart (Xavier), and Hugh Jackman (Wolverine). Those three (especially McKellen) carried the X-Men movies with serious acting skills and charisma.
It's a bit like the latest Star Trek. The Universe is the same, but the faces are gone, and despite there are new, well-looking faces and good actors, you don't feel the old mood.
Also, there is something certainly missing with those prequels. While cgi and visual techniques are growing, the basic feeling of the former sequels is not present.
First Class tries really hard to drag you in, but with me (and some others I know) it failed. Mystique was ever a character who had not enough screen time, and here she has, is sexy and beautiful and interesting, but keeps being not more than a nice color blob, like one of James Bond's Babes. Magneto's development is shown in detail, but it didn't convince me. Xavier's development is also shown, and we learn how he worked together with magneto, but with all that action and ba-boom this relationship between the two most powerful mutants keeps being - i don't find another word - uninteresting. The worst part is Emma Frost's, her character is paper-thin like Mystique in X3.
The movie may fulfill all the expectations younger viewers may have, but for me it kept being hollow and a CGI action flick between many, despite its great efforts to convince me of the opposite. After the final battle, however intriguing, I wasn't that intrigued.