Pretty good, entertaining, better than I expected, casting quibble

Rating: 6/10 (30 December 2015)

I rarely if ever have added a spoiler to my reviews here, and I shall not now.
First I'll say that I've recently been watching the entire X-Men series in chronological order for essentially the first time (I'd seen the first film when it was released but watched it again here), and went in without any influence or expectations (I don't even read the story off the box first), so each film was watched with a thoroughly open mind. Since I'm not going to review each one on IMDb, I'll only say that the only one that I didn't like was "Wolverine: Origins". That movie was awful; the rest were good to very good.
I expected First Class to be marketing on the X-Men franchise but without adding anything unique or relevant to the story; however, I was pleasantly wrong. In fact, I found it to be quite entertaining, well acted, and slightly significant to the rest of the series.
Only minor complaint was, could they have hired actors to play young Magneto and Professor X that look any less like their older counterparts? When the only physical requirement for casting was that they were thin, white, and British, it made the whole connection with the older versions too difficult. Neither styles nor mannerisms presented by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were attempted by the younger actors.