Better than the average, but far from spectacular

Rating: 6/10 (5 October 2011)

The Verdict
Slightly better than your average Sci-Fi action flick, "X-Men: First Class" caters to teenage audience, although it definitely has something to offer adults as well. Overall, the movie is not in the same league as "Inception", "Star Trek", or "Batman Begins".
The Positives
"X-Men: First Class" offers three main story lines. The first and by far the best out of the three is about Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Erik Lensherr (Magneto): their strikingly different childhood years and youth, their acquaintance, their friendship, their different styles of mentorship and leadership, their inner struggles and disagreements, and their fateful choices that led to the final confrontation.
This is a deep, touching, emotional, cleverly written, and stylishly directed story, magnificently played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. It also introduces a powerful original music score, splendid decoration sets, elegant costumes, and a masterful photography and art direction.
If the rest of the movie were on the same high level, "X-Men: First Class" would have been truly first class. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
The Negatives
The second story line starts with Charles and Erik tracking down and recruiting the teenage mutants. Then it focuses on the fresh recruits: their unique gifts, their relationships, their vulnerabilities, and their coming of age.
So many things happen to them for the first time: first love and first loss, first great temptation and first encounter with the great evil, and of course, first life changing decisions that would ultimately put them into one of the two camps – the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Mutants.
The story could have been very good if the screenwriters had enough talent and courage to make it into something more than just a collection of genre clichés.
Instead of a poignant, moving tale, they created a stereotypical, superficial, mediocre popcorn teenage entertainment with average acting and some impressive visual effects.
The third story line tells us how Charles and Erik, their young apprentices, their allies from the CIA, and their main antagonist and the villain of the piece - Sebastian Shaw with his colorful gang of "bad" mutants become secretly involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis and shamelessly manipulate the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union.
That story was supposed to glue the other stories into a single, comprehensive, multifaceted narrative. Instead, it has unfortunately become one of the most primitive, ridiculous, poorly written scripts ever created by Hollywood.
Based on a comic book or not, a story still need to satisfy some basic standard of decency to be watchable without disgust. Based on a comic book or not, a screenplay for adults cannot be intellectually inferior to "Dora the Explorer", not even mentioning ""Go, Diego, Go!"" It is especially relevant when a movie script refers to historical events.
Oh well, I think I should stop grumbling now and admit that the amazing visual effects and the battle scenes made the intricate twists of the 'Cuban Missile" saga quite bearable for me.
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