HOLY EXCREMENTAL EUPHANISM that was terrible.

Rating: 1/10 (26 May 2006)

When setting up the time frame at the beginning, we are told that it is "Sometime in the near future".
Excellent.
That means that there may still be time to avoid this calamity! I don't mind that there were more mutants included in the cast. The X-Men is a large family in comics, and it was fun in the first two movies trying to spot the little cameos. However, there were obviously too many for the characters to keep track of. Maybe that's why they... well, never mind.
Apparently there were also too many plot points for the writers to keep track of, because those also were hastily portrayed or forgotten.
The characters were sadly written as idiots. Often an obvious solution to a situation completely escapes the characters. Just watch the ending (no spoiler here, don't worry), where our heroes are so certain of the only way to resolve the crisis, despite the audience shouting at the screen about another safer, more efficient and completely obvious means to thwart the "bad guy". Magneto said it best in the first film: "I thought you people lived in a school."
As for the cast, Hugh Jackman is still the man to play Wolverine, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were nice to see, and Famke Janssen was good but extraordinarily underused given the apparent importance of her character. Kelsey Grammar wasn't too horrible as Beast, though it felt like some of the lines were almost stumbled through (I blame the writers, again). Halle Berry, however, needs her Oscar taken away; there really needs to be a ceremony where representatives of the academy pry the statue from her arms. Perhaps there should be a probationary period for an Oscar, perhaps about three years, wherein an actor must give another performance to justify the award... but that's all for another rant in another area of the internet.
I guess there were other important members of the cast, but again, too many characters to be kept track of by lesser talents. Perhaps a better writer and/or director might have been able to pull of such a large cast of characters, and perhaps I might have lobster for breakfast instead of oatmeal.
All that said, I do love the X-Men, and perhaps that is why I am being harsh. I think I will eventually pick this up on DVD... when the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version is ready.
To close, it is said that one can learn more about writing from bad material than from good. I believe I'm due some sort of degree or at least some college credit after tonight.