A wretched melange of cliches and violence

Rating: 2/10 (5 May 2003)

Spoilers herein...
I agree with other reviewers that X2 had a number of truly redeeming scenes: the opening assassination attempt, the Magneto escape, and some of the sexual intrigue between Jean/Wolverine, Wolverine/Mystique, and Mystique/Magneto come to mind.
However, I found myself yawning and glancing around the theatre by the halfway point. I felt that the movie was riddled with plot holes, unsubtle (and unfunny) moments, incongruous violence, and failure to pursue 90% of the characters far enough to make you give a crap about what happened to them.
Several of my favorites: - That, somehow, a "neck liquid"-possessed Nightcrawler was able to beat the daylights out of 30 Secret Service men and then spend the rest of the film doing nothing of interest? - That Mystique impersonates the dead (?) Senator Kelly on a consistent enough basis to get anything worthwhile accomplished. - That Magneto could A) suck elemental iron straight from someone's body and B) put enough mass together to make anything worthwhile? - That Pyro seemed intent on playing an evil Slytherin malcontent instead of an X-person, as if he'd wandered onto the wrong set the day of the shoot.
Just dreadful.