Reasonably entertaining but...

Rating: 4/10 (21 April 2008)

Oh good grief! How are the mighty fallen? I feel compelled to comment on this title, having seen it again last night. I've been disappointed by it every time. I think my biggest problem with it has to be around the character of Jean Grey/The Phoenix. At the end of X-Men 2, they hinted very heavily at her realisation as the character of the Marvel comic books and I was expecting/anticipating it right up until the moment she re-appears in the story. I was expecting her to be the ultimate weapon in the X-Men's arsenal, against Magneto's growing army, not a largely innocuous member of Magneto's 'Brotherhood'. As a result, Magneto's army seems pitifully small, the action confined to the USA, when the development of the so-called cure could have been a catalyst to something far more widespread and exciting.
There are many things to recommend the film but for the most part I can't get past the continuing focus on two totally undeveloped groups of mutants, the idiocy of not using The Phoenix as more than an obscure figurehead (so much more could have been made of the class 5 mutant idea), and most especially a Famke Janssen who looks positively jaundiced!