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I think its about time for Bryan Singer to step aside and hand over the reigns. X-M:A spends more than half the film with various character building interactions, most of which work and I appreciate, but since we've also got a plot to worry about, we're constantly cutting to watch a travelogue of the villain squad collecting members. Nothing actually happens for 3/4ths of the film and the villains are so poorly defined (with one exception), and frankly poorly chosen (only two of the "horsemen" make any sense at all from a "I want the most powerful" perspective) that you don't really care about the final confrontation all that much, which it turns out is a good thing because it's completely underwhelming. The bottom line is that Singer flat out cannot direct action worth a drat. His best X-film, X2, rode a great script to glory but here the screenplay is pretty pedestrian and he just doesn't have the talent to elevate the material. Some seriously dodgy CGI in a lot of places. I know that's an easy thing to toss off in a review but I was actually astounded at how bad the green-screening was at times. It was like looking at a blockbuster from 10+ years ago in spots. The film is also entirely too long...and yet not long enough. Not enough of the run time is spent giving us a reason to really care about the outcome other than the usual shorthand of "Earth is in danger, don't you like Earth???" that we get from lazy screenwriters so often. But the film commits more than 20 minutes to a side-jaunt for literally the sole purpose of giving us a very brief cameo that we all know is coming. Absolutely nothing else about this waste of screen time matters in the slightest. The acting is all fine-to-good (with the exception of Jennifer Lawrence, who is sleepwalking through this sucker) and I liked most of the character interaction scenes and some of the humor lands (though not all of it). It's just a serviceable summer popcorn flick without much to recommend it, honestly. X2 and First Class remain the best of the X-films, but I think it's time for Singer to tap out. Edit: Forgot to mention John Ottman's score! It's pretty good, with liberal re-use of his X2 theme (as has become standard), but it isn't stellar. Fits the film fine. 2/5 ComposerGuy fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jun 5, 2016 |
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Jun 5, 2016 04:52
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