Stick to partying, Mr Ratner, you're not a film-maker

Rating: 4/10 (18 May 2006)

There are so many problems with this film, it's impossible to discuss without some spoilers, so I apologise for that. For a start, it's quite boring. I'm not sure how that's possible for an action movie running 104 minutes, but it is. The action scenes aren't terribly exciting, and quite a few of them are a step back or too similar to scenes from 1 or 2. Storm's and Wolverine's fights, for instance, seem all too familiar. Juggernaught running through walls? Wasn't that a Levi's ad? The big finale? Bit dull, really.
Mmmm, Cyclops bumped off in the first 10 minutes? I don't remember that in the Dark Phoenix saga. This 'origin' of the Phoenix is slightly daft, too, and makes the name utterly nonsensical. Nor is there any of the evil from Phoenix. Her eyes go dark and her skin grey, but there seems to be little malice in what she does. There's some debris circulating around her, sure, but the deaths of people in this is more a kind of accident than deliberate. Where's the Dark Phoenix who went out and devoured a sun? Wolverine watches Xavier reduced to a flurry of ashes, and instead of taking off after Phoenix and the brotherhood of mutants, he falls to his knees by the Prof's wheelchair, 'consoled' by a sobbing Storm. It'd be funny if it wasn't so bad. Speaking of funny, Xavier's funeral. Oh dear lord who wrote this garbage? There were quite a few pointless wasted characters - Rogue and Angel particularly.
I won't say that there weren't a couple of moments that captured some spark, but they were very few and far between, and mostly involved the utterly beautiful Famke Jannsen (I might be showing some bias, I don't know). Halle Berry was utterly wasted, again, Kelsey Grammar was a blue Frasier, really (what was with the 50's glove hands, they stood out a bit?). Everyone's dialogue was bad. The story was bad. The bit with the bridge? What was the point? Sorry about the crummy review, but this really was a crummy film.
p.s. Weren't the x-men supposed to be a well trained bunch? Rogue was looking quite chunky to me. Apologies to Miss Paquin.