The f/x saved and ruined this film

Rating: 5/10 (8 December 2003)

Maybe if the makers of this film didn't have all the special effects to rely on, it would have been better. Perhaps greater attention would have been paid to the story thereby shortening the movie by 15 or 20 minutes. There is a spoiler in the 3rd paragraph.
First, the good: I liked the way the film was lit resisting the urge of many current filmmakers to clothe everything in darkness ala Tim Burton. Also, I liked the editing (at least in part) that allowed us to see the movie without requiring a graphics accelerator inside our head to process speed cuts.
The bad: The focus of the movie deteriorated by the end making the final climax anti-climactic. Part of the blame goes to the editing which had us watching several very tedious scenes which had nothing to add to the plot (i.e, watching the good mutants decide who would break into the Alkali Lake project), and part to the screenwriting which had the characters doing nothing else but greeting each other (i.e., Around the 1 hour 40 minute mark, I think it was Storm and Jean Gray who greeted each other like they were getting ready to go to a picnic: Jean see Storm approaching and says "Storm" to which Storm looks at Jean and says "Jean".). This kind of useless dialogue happened way too much throughout the movie. (5/10)
In the spirit of the film, I leave you with this dialogue: WOLVERINE - "Hey." ME - "Hey." WOLVERINE - "Did you like the movie?" ME - "Yeah." WOLVERINE - "Yeah?" ME - "Yeah, where's Jean?"