X-Men Origins: Wolverine (spoiler-free) review

Forest Gump once said, "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is." And it was not X-MO:W.

I know it's not tuesday, and I know this isn't movie review blog, but in anticipation of a growing injustice, I have to voice this, so that at least the six people who read it will know the truth.

The reviews are already pouring in. Half a star here, one star there, but I'm here to let you know that this film is *easily* a two star. I'm not sure what compels me to defend this film - this is a feeling not unlike when you and some friends are making fun of someone and then someone goes too far, and all the sudden, you have to take up the defensive.

X-MO:W has a lot going against it and only a little working for it, BUT this may be the only review you read that admits it had something going for it. Jackman's reprisal delivered just what it promised, more Wolverine acting exactly the same as he always does. If you're looking for a heart-wrenching tear jerker story of the making, breaking, and rebuilding of a man, you were in the wrong place to begin with. If you want two hours of people getting punched in the face, stuff getting cut up, and the occassional explosion, this movie is almost a two and a half star film. There are good scenes, almost every Wolverine/Sabretooth fight is a good one. Liev Schreiber is a *much* better Sabretooth than the first X-Men movie gave us (just the type of evolution that leaves hope for the movie franchise to one day become what it should have started as). None of the action was disappointing, even if it wasn't always spectacular. And the desire to throw familiar names and faces at us without rhyme or reason, although at points tiresome, was still fun to get them on screen - like B listers the Blob or Gambit.

That was my defense paragraph, now it's time for me to get in line with everyone else and nod my head in synch with the masses. The script... wasn't very good (I'm practicing restraint). While this did have the comdic effect of watching some pretty decent actors try to act around the writing, mostly it just made the movie a mess. Wolverine has a long backstory, more than, say, an hour and a half could cover, but that didn't stop them. I don't know the Wolverine lore all that well and even I saw a lot of departures. If you don't know / don't care whether they mucked up Silver Fox's powers or skipped Wolverine's time in Japan, then these glossing overs won't have much of an impact on your movie going experience. I am sure, however, that a lot of fanboys will be loosing some sleep tonight and writing nasty letters tomorrow.

Then there's the CG. It always amazes me when huge Hollywood productions, costing millions and millions of dollars to make, launch with community college sophmore year computer graphics programing level CG work. At times I laughed out loud, and others in the theater joined me. A scene where Jackman jumps out of plane and hits the water somes to mind - as it looked like they maybe greenscreened a toy tumbling, did a little CG over top of it, and then laid it over the water - it was bad. I promised to try to keep this spoiler-free, so I'll leave my review of rediculous scenes out, although I only laughed at one of them. For those of you who have seen it already... fire escape. I'm also not at all sure what they did to Patrick Stewart to make him look so creepy as a young Professor, but it's disturbing.

It's not a bad film. It's not a great film. It will be number one this weekend. It was decidedly less campy than the first X-Men movie, which is a step in the right direction. It also had a lot less of what screwed up the first three, which was Scott Summers, but I won't get into that.

Whew - all done.