At its best is was OK

Rating: 4/10 (11 June 2011)

A rebooting of the X-Men. It gives us the origin of Dr. X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender). They are no longer brothers--Dr. X is a brilliant scientist and Magneto saw his mother brutally killed in a German concentration camp. Most of this takes place in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis (so we can have a younger--and hotter--cast). Sebastian Stan (Kevin Bacon) is an evil mutant who (with some followers) wants to start a world wide apocalypse. Dr. X and his band of good mutants set out to stop him.
The special effects are top notch and this movie clearly was made on a BIG budget with incredible locations and such...but I was bored. The script is VERY slow and the constant "winks" at the audience (dialogue that clearly shows future events) gets tiresome. The evil mutants are never introduced by name (except for Emma Frost) and their powers are never explained leading to confusion (in the audience). Add to that is the totally unnecessary length (this film could have wrapped up in less than 2 hours), plot holes all over the place and historical inaccuracies galore. Even worse some of the acting is terrible--Lucas Till is dreadful as Havoc and McAvoy is bad too. Even worse is Bacon! To top it all off the one black mutant is killed off early on! I thought that kind of scripting went out in the 1960s! It struck me as ridiculously racist. On the good side--Fassbender is GREAT as Magneto and January Jones is terrific as Emma Frost (although she is captured far too easily--and never even attempts to escape). A cameo by Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is hysterical and easily the best part of the movie! The use of multiple screens during the training sessions were nice too. But, all in all, I found this boring and pointless. I was looking at my watch more than the screen! A 4 all the way.