First Star I See Tonight

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It's so impossible to review these big blockbuster movies when you're coming at them the week after they've arrived. So many people have already had their say, and recently at that; it seems as if I could just point in any general direction and say, "What s/he said." The ether knows the answers! I'm at its mercy. It seems especially so when it's regarding something that I've propped myself up well in favor of for a long enough time as to call my neutrality into question. When it comes to a movie full of Fassy, I could hardly claim to be Switzerland. I'm more North Korea and he's my Kim Jong-Il. That's a sentence.

Point being, I could tell you that Michael Fassbender owns every inch of the frame and every second of the screen-time that he's allowed in X-Men Muppet Babies, and even a good percentage of the time he's off-screen too; that he saunters through this thing as if the camera, that's been chasing him for years now, has finally caught up and tapped into his sex-on-stick-legs rhythm... but who's gonna believe well-past-brainwashed lil' ol' me? Thankfully I knew he was owning it even without the aid of my influence since the audience around me, surprisingly unsedated for a 10am Saturday showing - I guess they were feeling the Fass stirring inside them too - whooped with glee at his every turn. 

I got through all that so that when I say that that the film needed more of him, and to be more focused upon him, it's not just my obsession speaking. I really do think the film would've been helped with a tighter focus, and Magneto's story had the right stuff; not only was Fassbender proving for the umpteenth time that he's the real deal, but the movie seemed to right itself when he and McAvoy were front and central. We know FOX, ever the bastion for eliminating common sense whenever possible in the search for more dollars, rushed director Matthew Vaughn through the hoops for this movie to get it out when they wanted it out; I think if they'd been allowed to tighten their scope just a hint and chisel this thing down to its main story it could've been a much more solid form.

As is though, having too much going for you instead of too little isn't the worst way to spend two hours. I realize you could apply that sentence in a way to something by Michael Bay - if there's something Bay's always got, it's excess - but here I do think Vaughn is at least keeping his pinky finger firmly planted on the right side of coherence. He knows how to tell a story with images that isn't just some hell-storm of CG; plus he's interested enough in the humanity of the characters that he's throwing on-screen to allow his actors to do their thing and get their moderate arcs across, sometimes with surprising-for-this-sort-of-thing precision.  

So scenes like the one where the Teen Mutants show off their skills to each other might sit a little awkwardly in the narrative, tonally at least, but they're still bright little microcosms of fun. These moments pop up and burn brightly all over the film - they just needed a little more glue to hold them together, is all. A steady, healthy flame instead of staggered fireworks. And I guess in the month of June no studio wants that.