First Class Dreck

Rating: 3/10 (11 June 2011)

Spend enough money on marketing, "virola" and shill reviews, and you too can turn a dog into a blockbuster. "X Men: First Class" is the latest example of the precipitous decrease in the quality and intelligence of Hollywood product.
Why is it so HUGE then? Well, when you consider several thousand people are involved with any big budget movie today, all of whom have friends, family, and some degree of vested interest in the success of the film, and how easy it is to flood the sites like IMDb with outright LIES... it's simple to figure how we keep getting fooled by an army of liars. Oh there's also the fact that they obviously bought the critics and are spending money they should have spent on ACTORS on a deluge of TV spots.
Some specifics, if you need the overlay to say "Moscow... Russia" when the scene changes to a "Red Square" environment and might have otherwise puzzled, "Hey wait, is that Moscow, Russia? or Moscow, Texas?" stop reading and go see it, you will love this movie. It was made for your demographic.
If on the other hand you expect decent acting and direction in your comic book movies, together with some comic relief, an intelligent script, and effects that allow you to suspend disbelief instead of looking at your watch during the big CGI scenes, this movie has -none- of those things, not one iota.
Kevin Bacon? great actor, awful comic book movie villain. Rest of the cast are no-names, and it shows, painfully. The script is trite white hat/black hat fare, dredging up the Nazis in case you "Moscow, Russia" folks can't figure out who the bad guy is. Maybe three comic relief moments in the film, no one in the packed theater with me laughed... ever. In fact, I suspect everyone else in the theater was busy looking at their watches with me.
Painful and very dishonestly hyped here and elsewhere.