Undone by its best scene

Rating: 5/10 (12 January 2013)

The best scene in X-Men: First Class is, arguably, the brief cameo by Hugh Jackman/Wolverine. Unfortunately, that scene also undermines much of the logic of the film.
Just in case you aren't aware of it, a young Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) encounter Wolverine in a bar as part of their efforts to recruit mutants to a team they're forming. They introduce themselves; he promptly and rudely tells them to go away, which they promptly do. It's a very short, very funny scene, a crowd-pleaser, and arguably one of the best scenes in the film, if not the best. It also, unfortunately, ruins the movie.
I can live with a prequel introducing continuity errors into a franchise, which X-Men: First Class does. I can live with an adaptation from another medium making significant changes to established characters--again, the film does this several times. What I cannot accept, however, is a film where supposedly intelligent characters repeatedly make stupid decisions, committing the same mistake over and over, and thereby undermine all their efforts to achieve their goals.
Back to that scene and how it illustrates this problem. Assuming that at least some of the facts about Logan from the comics and X-Men Origins: Wolverine are still true in this semi-reboot, Logan is an extremely experienced and talented fighter who is over 150 years old at the time of this story. Xavier and Lehnsherr are going up against a team of powerful, mature mutants, and yet they abandon recruiting this formidable warrior after a one-sentence brush off. Instead they bring in a group of children, essentially, who are under-powered and/or have little to no control over their powers. It logically would have taken years to shape those X-cadets into anything resembling a potent fighting force--time which, according to the logic of the story, Xavier and Lehnsherr didn't have.
And frankly, the kids aren't very interesting characters. Even if the scene with Wolverine had been dropped to avoid calling attention to the problem I've outlined, it still wouldn't help this charisma-challenged first X-Men team. The movie works best when it focuses on Xavier and Lehnsherr and their complex friendship. The writers could have left out the X-babies and just used Prof X and Magneto and we'd have a much better film. Either that or they should have been recruiting a group of older, more experienced mutants who would have been more of a match out of the gate for Shaw and his cabal.
There were some things I liked about this film (mainly the Xavier/Magneto bromance, but also the many exciting action sequences) and others I didn't (such as the awkward insertion of anti-mutant sentiment, January Jones' underwhelming portrayal of Emma Frost, Mystique's under-written motivation for joining Magneto, the many anachronisms such as Banshee's hairstyle, etc.) Overall, I was disappointed because with a few simple changes X-Men: First Class could have been a much better movie. The first two X-Men films still haven't been equalled. Bryan Singer, come back to the director's chair, we miss you!