Tapehead Reviews: X-Men

TOTAL X-creMENt

Picture if you will...driving a vehicle on an open road, suddenly screeching toward a detour or "dead end" which becomes unavoidable, placing life in jeapordy while wasting precious time before reaching the end. Well, that very experience is kinda like watching this summer's big-budget bile known as X-MEN. And I'm here to tell the plain truth right about NOW funk soul brotha.

ROADBLOCK #1 (A typical Hollywood exec's brainstorm): "HEY! I gotta clever idear-let's hire the director of THE USUAL SUSPECTS to create our long-awaited live action adaptation of them there popular X-MEN comix!!"

What's the end result? PURELY GODAWFUL.

A plan to conceive an X-MEN franchise has been around for decades. Various directors and names upon names were once attached over the years, and yer tellin' me this is as good as it gets? I just wanna know who these Tinseltown clowns think they're pitching this pile to? If it's the ever-faithful comic bookie devotees', I would imagine most if not ALL would be sourly disappointed. But then again, this world does have fans of that Wesley Snipes rubble known as BLADE, so thee argument is moot.

My first concern with director Bryan Singer's celluloid corpse is, if those X-MEN comics were as boring as his dismal direction, NOBODY would've read 'em in the first place. Secondly, if X-MEN fanatix do in fact adore this film, y'all are simply FIBBING to yer own damn self! I mean, what the hell exists on that screen to like? Do you appreciate overwrought character development of vapid comic book characters which do nothing to enhance the story? What-we're supposed to CARE about these heroic figures? We're supposed to FEEL THEIR PAIN? We gotsta understand where they're comin' from, dawg? Listen, I have absolutely no problem with character development. My problem arises when that feature is displayed in an abysmal manner as it is here. Think for a minute pal...IT'S A F**KING COMIC BOOK! Not Macbeth ferchrissakes.

ROADBLOCK #2: The casting is simply horrendous...PERIOD. I would much rather have seen Glenn Danzig cast as Wolverine as originally planned! Hell, he coulda aped a hip rendition of "Mother 2000" when Salsa-strutting-his-stuff with our delectable Dr. Jean Grey for all I care.

And a...let's not fuhget-

ROADBLOCK #3: You DO NOT open a comic book flick aiming to resemble JAKOB THE LIAR. 'Nuff said.

MOVIES SUCK, MAN! I dunno WHY I continue watching these trainwrecks-let alone review the junk. I guess I feel I'm doing at least ONE PERSON a favour by saving their Private Ryans to be put toward a six pack o' slosh instead. Sorry to inform yous, but motion pictures CONSISTANTLY enter that realm of "abortion filmmaking"-a term I have OFFICIALLY christened here. It's the 2000 trend, buddy! F**K the storyline! Revolve an ENTIRE film around ABUNDANT SPECIAL EFFECTS ONLY. The audience won't care! Yeah, that movie RULED. Whatever.

Anyway, is WREX-MEN all director Bryan "one hit wonder" Singer's fault? NEH. He was only employed to do a regular joe typa job-one he did poorly, but one the studio obviously had no probs with otherwise they woulda fired his ass, replaced him with far superior souls such as Sam Raimi, Paul Verhoeven, or that French guy who helmed ALIEN RESURRECTION and had a merry day. However, I'm POSITIVE these aforementioned talents were all busy creating better movies from much cooler scripts. On second thought, yeah I'd hafta say it IS all Bryan Singer's fault. CASE CLOSED.

In memorium, if thou art a self-confessed X-MAN who craves boredom, has absolutely NO REGRETS about trashing time & green on yet another mundane movie which will MOST DEFINITELY have one staring at the theatre EXIT sign, don't let me block ye perishable path.

It's YOUR f**king life.

-- Brian Kustek

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