The Lamest, Most Confusing X2 review

[Yuna_Firerose 0]

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'X2' is a mind-numbing, by-the-numbers venture

 

By David Elliott

Union-Tribune Movie Critic

May 1, 2003

 

Special effects are least special when a movie offers nearly nothing but special effects. They blur into a giddy, expensive haze, which is what happens in the mind-sapping "X2: X-Men United."

 

The film is like a shopping mall for its concepts. At the hub is the dutiful sequel section, laboring to extend the fantasy of a human world infiltrated by powerful, feared mutants, which the 2000 film transplanted from its comic-book roots (there are video games, too).

 

Then there is the effects section, each mutant getting a chance to show his/her powers. There is the senior section of powerful old men, the creepy wizard Magneto (Ian McKellen) maintaining a duel of Elite British Accents with the paranormal seer Xavier (Patrick Stewart). And what seems to be the talent agency "check 'em out" section for new or aspiring stars (Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Kelly Hu, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Aaron Stanford).

 

The pieces snap-lock together and spin industrially, despite some Mozart on the soundtrack. There is campy supportive talent. Brian Cox, usually a brilliant performer, plays a bigoted hunter of mutants whose face mutates into ham hocks of bad acting. Alan Cumming is Wagner the Nightcrawler, who looks charred and freaks out everyone in the White House but (please, follow the logic) is a piously Catholic, German circus performer.

 

In such a spectacle, full nudity only occurs because the naked woman has the skin of a blue lizard. The whopper moments don't always whop. A big dam collapse is slowly promised and then weakly delivered.

 

Barely directed (by Bryan Singer) in any real sense, the action often depends on whippy editing. The thrills rocket past so quickly that we seldom get the satisfying pleasure of a movie that knows how to use its spaces, gizmos and trained bodies.

 

The most humanly specific mutant is the one who gets called an animal. That is Jackman's Wolverine, who is like a punk brother of Jack Nicholson in "Wolf" crossed with a truckstop Elvis. His hands sprout long blades, for outbreaks of impaling and skin-raking.

 

Destiny is at stake every moment, but seems tired, perhaps from having spent so much destiny time on "Lord of the Rings." The mutants are just personifications of their rather pointless, one-note powers. Dialogue cranks out with TV-serial monotony, so that "Nice shades" arrives with about the same force as "My wife took a power drill to her left temple."

 

Patrick Stewart's brainy bald dome is like a big anchor to keep this lavish barge from bobbing away. The film's key image shows a kid obsessively channel surfing – "X2" seems to have been made by and for people who constantly switch between "Star Trek" episodes and James Bond reruns, while hoping for some Hannibal Lecter.

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I don't think the review is lame because it's says the movie is bad; I just think a reviewer should see a movie before he/she trashes it.

Wagner the Nightcrawler, who looks charred and freaks out everyone in the White House but (please, follow the logic) is a piously Catholic, German circus performer.

....What's so confusing about an elf being religious and German? It's his logic that's flawed, in my opinion, not the movie's [although the movie does have it's own set of illogic moments].

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

He thinks Magneto is a wizard, therefore, that overrides anything worthwhile he had to say.

[Guest Askewniverse]

There is the senior section of powerful old men, the creepy wizard Magneto (Ian McKellen)

Wizard? I think that this reviewer is thinking of another character that McKellen played.

 

Alan Cumming is Wagner the Nightcrawler, who looks charred and freaks out everyone in the White House but (please, follow the logic) is a piously Catholic, German circus performer.

If the reviewer had bothered to pay attention to the movie, then he would know that Wagner's mind was manipulated when he "freaked out" everyone in the White House.

[Guest IDrinkRatsMilk]

Perhaps the wizard comment was merely a tongue in cheek lotr reference.

[Guest El Satanico]

I don't see any big problem with this review.

 

Like IDRM said the wizard comment was likely tongue in cheek.

 

Just because he didn't fully explain Nightcrawler's White House thing doesn't mean he didn't pay attention to the movie.

 

If you don't like a movie your review of said movie will tend to be sarcastic and mocking of the movie. This is what that review came off as. Hell, even Ebert does it to a degree when he dislikes a movie a great deal.

[Guest Crucifixio Jones]

Maybe every X-Men mark shouldn't post old reviews, bad or not, several months after the fact just because he or she is an X-Men mark. Get it through your head: NO ONE CARES except YOU.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

I'm waiting for someone to call you a hypocrite because of what you just said and then having Wolverine in your sig. I think there are maybe six people who actually "get" that one and the story behind it.

[Anakin Flair 0]

It's a bad review because it's hard to follow. I could barely make sense of what the reviewer is saying. If you don't like the movie, fine, that's your opinion. But at least write in a clear, concise manner.