Painfully Average

Rating: Null/10 (1 May 2003)

With a starting sequence that fires up the action appetite of the audience, and a trailer that looks better than much of the entire original X-Men movie does, my expectations were high for this movie.
Perhaps too high.
The story is somewhat complicated for a comic book eye candy action movie, and even though it is complicated (too many parties involved during most of the movie, with X-Men temporarily split into 3 groups and baddies into 2 groups, so the story tries to follow 5 groups of characters during some excruciating minutes!) it isn't particularly clever. It centres around a mad army colonel trying to wipe out all mutants, and the shakeup of the mutant groupings caused by his efforts.
So far so good, but with the aforementioned split-up, the movie feels like a patchwork that should generate tension, but does not succeed. As a result, the movie is slow, and I was convinced it was over 150 minutes long when it ended.
So, how is the action? And how are the dramatics? As an action movie, a lot of bang is delivered, but too far in between. As a dramatic movie about outcasts of society, only a few scenes are relevant and clearly planted too artificially in the midst of the story to feel anything but fake. As love triangle, only two or three dramatic scenes are delivered, as tutor-mentor relationship movie, hardly anything is delivered, ... In short, the movie tries to be too many things at the same time. Some scenes feel like Star Trek: Nemesis, others like Titanic, others again like the original X Men... But the whole feels disappointingly empty and hollow.
It's a sure blockbuster, but it's nothing more and nothing less than an inferior sequel to a decent comic book movie.