VGMRP: POSTAL REVIEW

A third of the way through POSTAL, only the second Uwe Boll movie I have seen, the director appears as himself, in a little german beer hat. "You know, there's a lot of rumors going around that my movies are financed with Nazi gold," he says, drinking a liter of beer, "And what should I say? You know, it's true. Someone must do something with the money."

Give the man credit, when Uwe Boll offends, he offends big. The nazi gold joke barely rates compared with some of the stuff that happens in this movie. POSTAL contains scenes about what "really" happened on the first 9/11 jet; namely, that after learning they'd only get 20 virgins in heaven, they decided to fly to the Bahamas before people broke the door down and crashed the plane into the twin towers. Uh, huh.

Postal the game was just an excuse to shoot people and laugh ironically about it. The movie is about the same thing, except that it's a COMEDY! More than that, it's an OFFENSIVE COMEDY! It says so right on the box:

Notice that the quote they run with isn't a positive quote, just a descriptive one.

Black or edgy comedy should be powered by the joke, not just the desire to make people lose their lunch. SOUTH PARK has practically mastered this, where you laugh and then you balk and then you laugh at yourself for laughing. But POSTAL, even when it does get some laughs, is usually so unremittingly stupid, awful or just plain racist that even Borat would feel awkward watching it.

Some other comic adventures involve a retarded jihadist who keeps forgetting to putting on his dynamite belt; a scene where our hero, "Postal Dude," using a live cat as a silencer (I spare you which end of the cat he uses); and later, after Postal Dude makes a big speech to the assorted villains about finding common ground, and someone helpfully shouts "Well we all hate Jews!" Yikes. The movie makes time to show a naked Dave Foley, and a 'comically' obsese woman who is too fat to get out of her own trailer. I didn't mind the part where the unhelpful lady at the welfare center got run over (and then run over again, and run over again) but how about the scene where a cop blows a chinese woman away with a shotgun for being a bad driver? Black comedy is a fine line, and Boll is the kind of douche who brings a slegehammer to a surgery.

I am in a quandary. Here we have one of the most offensive movies I have ever seen. And yet, it is a movie of one of the most reprehensible, offensive game series ever made, and it's on target. So... do I bring the critical fire, or do I say mission accomplished?

The answer is this: while this movie has more to do with the game than anything that happens in SUPER MARIO BROTHERS or STREET FIGHTER, just because it's accurate doesn't make it good. Or funny. And while I may have snickered or gasped at times, this is basically 100 minutes of a man playing with napalm who shouldn't even be allowed matches.

Even the good jokes get messed up. During a bizarre interview, "Postal Dude" is asked, "What is the difference between a duck?" Pause. Beat. He stares, whispers, "And?". They stare at him. Okay, funny. But then he screams "JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE I CAME HERE FOR A JOB WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH A COCKSUCKING MOTHERFUCKING DUCK?!" And there goes whatever bit of humor that was being developed.

Some scenes achieve a kind of doomed grandeur, that almost (but not quite) transcend the material. A gunfight at a theme park takes out so many children that it stops being horrifying and becomes kind of surreal. J.K. Simmons plays a Senate Candidate who rants, "NASA does not exist. Every space mission you've seen is a Hollywood forgery! We did not land on the moon! There is no 'John Glen'!" Too bad he gets blown up by a suicide bomber 15 minutes in. More likely, they only paid him for one days work.

The most notable thing in the entire 100 minutes is Verne Troyer, aka Mini-Me. Oh, not at first, he's basically doing the same Verne Troyer bit he always does. Then he is raped by a thousand monkeys. Seriously: a thousand monkeys, on the screen, advancing on Mini-Me; and he screams, "No, not the horny monkeys!" It's not something you see everyday. One hopes.

But in all serious-ness: if you're dating someone and you want to break up, just go visit their folks and suggest you rent this movie. You'll be out of that engagement so fast it'll make your head explode.

GRADE: Zero Stars (Out of 5)

P.S. The maker of the game POSTAL shows up, in a giant penis costume, to fight Uwe Boll for "fucking up his game POSTAL." Yes, the maker of the game fights the director of the movie IN the movie. It's not funny, but it does happen.

P.P.S.: Spoiler alert- the movie ends with atomic bombs going off and the world being destroyed, just like the million times better Dr. Strangelove. At the end of Dr. Strangelove, you were left wondering if we might all deserve to get blown up, for how stupid we are. After POSTAL, you're sure of it.

VGMRP: SUPER MARIO BROTHERS

SUPER MARIO BROTHERS:

We started with the arguable creative apex of the VGMRP, and we continue with the arguable creative nadir of video game movies, SUPER MARIO BROTHERS. It begins with some random guy in a Brooklyn accent narrating:

"A long long time ago, the Earth was ruled by dinosaurs. They were big, so not a lot of people went around hassing 'em. Actually, no people went around hassling 'em cuz there weren't any people yet. Just the first tiny mammals. Basically, life was good. Then something happened: a giant meteorite struck the Earth. Goodbye dinosaurs! But what if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? What if the impact of that meteor created a parallel dimension where the dinosaurs continued to thrive and evolve into intelligent, vicious, and aggressive beings... just like us? And hey, what if they found a way back? "

That's a lot of prologue to chew on, it might be the prologue of a quirky, fun movie. The problem is, it is immediately followed by the title card: SUPER MARIO BROTHERS.

And now, you know you are screwed.

Why? Because you know that the people behind this movie have no idea what the game is actually about. Making a movie out of the actual game of SMB may or may not be a good idea- most likely not a good idea, because if you DID make a true-to-game movie, it would look like this:

Drawn by that guy who does awesome work at www.drmcninja.com

That is an awesome drawing, but what makes the drawing work is what would make a live action movie fail. When you actually think about what happens in SMB, it's kind of insane. Maybe it works in a cartoon world, but real actors fighting real talking mushrooms with fireballs magically coming out of their hands? Mama Mia, you better hope there's some whiskey in that movie popcorn you're eating.

Luckily (or unluckily), the makers of this movie dodged the issue by producing the first film based on a video game which has almost nothing to do with the game they based it on. Yeah, it's got Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo), and yeah they're plumbers who get sucked down a drain into another world. But once they go down the pipes, the world they encounter looks less like this:

Yay!

and more like this:

Uh.... what?

Not only is the movie inexplicable to casual movie-goers and parents who were dragged in by their children, but it's incoherent to fans. I grew up on Super Mario Brothers, and I have no fucking clue what is going on in this movie. Neither do the actors, as scene after scene seems to involve miserable human beings trying to explain to each other what the hell is going on. In other words, it is basically a documentary of notable actors trapped on a production from hell.

The plot is some nonsense about a de-evolving machine, a meteorite that can merge two worlds, an entire civilization that's descended from the dinosaurs, an ugly metropolis called Dino-Hattan and a king who was turned into a giant, city-wide piece of fungus. You know, just like the popular video game, Super Mario Brothers.

The only thing that feels accurate (unfortunately) is the ridiculous stereotyping of the Mario Brothers themselves, who at times sound like they are refugees from a sketch on The State:

Mario Mario: This can't be Manhattan.

Luigi Mario: I don't know, I haven't been to Manhattan in a couple weeks.

Mario Mario: Must have been a bad couple of weeks!

See? Just like all Brooklyn Plumbers, they hate everything that's not Italian and not Brooklyn. Another classic piece of dialogue:

Mario: Mama Mia!

Luigi: Pasta Fagoli!

Mario: Brooklyn Dodgers!

Both: Aeeeeeyyyyy!!!

The actors deal with this mess in their own ways: Bob Hoskins can barely conceal his contempt for the production, John Leguizamo looks excited to be in a movie, and Dennis Hopper (playing Koopa like a jerky CEO of a cigarette company) looks like he snorted some glue before each take.

And why not? According to the IMDB trivia page, the script was being rewritten each day, to the point that no one was paying attention anymore. Inexplicable scenes include a slow dance of goombas in an elevator, Dennis Hopper making strange demands about pizza at his moment of triumph, a six foot bouncer named Big Bertha (who looks like the demon love child of Grace Jones and Aretha Franklin) and my favorite bizarre trend, random cars smashing into each other for no reason. Seriously: there is a car chase in this movie, but cars seem to crash into each other whether the Mario Brothers are being chased or not. In fact, during the car sequence, a car flies onscreen and collides with a pile of garbage and IT WASN'T EVEN RUN OFF THE ROAD. It just blows up on principle.

It's only off-topic fan service that makes this movie have anything to do with the game... character names, vague references, sound cues, etc. It's as if they bought a script and changed the names; meaning that the fans aren't happy (and they weren't) and no one else cares enough to watch it (they didn't). The movie might have worked on its own terms, without any of the video game trappings, it's just weird enough. But what this means is that there is still a Mario Brothers movie that could be made that's actually about the game world that was created. For my part, I hope we never get to see "Super Mario Begins", if only because out of all the game worlds to make into a filmed story, the Mario universe is the most lacking. Mario's adventures are light fun on your Nintendo, but there's no depth or consistency to the world that merits further exploration.

While crass commercialism was the impetus behind this monstrosity, and the final result pleased no one, one must be fair. This movie is not the result of lazy hackery. The film's 2 directors, and a team of production designers, put a lot of time and effort into creating a new world out of whole cloth. I say this in the lightest of defenses, because the world they have created is hideous and bizarre. It's like Blade Runner as rendered by L. Ron Hubbard. They try so hard, yet they fail even harder.

SUPER MARIO BROTHERS plays like a fever dream, or a nightmare that's not so much scary as it is plain weird. I can't recommend it and I couldn't tell you when I'd ever want to watch it again, but I won't quickly forget it. Also, if I remember Mortal Kombat: Annihilation correctly, I've know what the bottom of the barrel looks like, and we're not there yet.

RATING: * (out of 5)

P.S. This is the first well meaning, horribly misconceived sci-fi project to feature the song "Love is the Drug" played in a nightmarish bar/dance sequence. The other was "Monkeybone." Noodle that one for awhile.

P.P.S. For a treasury of hilarious tidbits, check out the movie's IMDB trivia page, where I learned (among other things) that Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo would often drink to get through each day of filming. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108255/trivia

VGMRP: MORTAL KOMBAT

We start the VGMRP with, arguably, the creative apex of video game movies: MORTAL KOMBAT.

After a bitchingly rad credit sequence involving flames and techno, our hero, Liu Kang, receives a telegram (!) that reads as follows:

LIU KANG

BROTHER DEAD. RETURN HOME.

GRANDFATHER

And that's all you need to know about Liu Kang, Bruce Lee stand in. We next meet Sonja Blade in the same kind of club that Blade frequents; namely, the rave where even a shotgun blast doesn't stop the party. She wants the guy who killed her partner, aka Token White Female Cop. Then we meet Johnny Cage on a set of a crappy action movie that, uncannily, resembles most of the crappy JCVD and Steven Segal action movies of the 90's. He's out to prove he's no fake, aka the ironic white action hero.

This is all the intro the game needed to these characters, and the same proves true for the movie. There is a kind of beautiful, stupid simplicity to a film that can introduce it's three protagnonists, all of their motivations, a villain threatening to destroy the world AND Christopher Lambert as a god of thunder in about ten minutes.

Oh my yes, Christopher Lambert. "You have been chosen to defend the fate of your planet in a tournament called Mortal Kombat!" and cackles like a crazy man, or like an actor paid thousands of dollars to goof around as the 'god of thunder.' It works either way.

But I'm being too glib. By sticking with archetypes and simple motivations (revenge, revenge, desire to prove oneself, desire to be Christopher Labert), we get who our heroes are and why they are there. Everything else is a collection of colorful villany and chop-socky.

The game wasn't complicated: two badass ninja/kung fu/aliens/monsters/gods/women fight to the tune of techno until one of them is defeated. Given the often dire history of video game movies, the praiseworthy thing is not that this movie got it right, but that it DIDN'T SCREW IT UP.

Overall, the movie is a sometimes uneasy mix of good and bad. For every deliciously hammy Christopher Lambert moment, you get Robin Shou trying to be the next Bruce Lee and failing. For every kind of awesome set and fight scene, you get a preposterous mid 90's CG effect that takes you right out of the movie (Reptile, I'm looking at you here.) For every fantastic villain death (Scorpion gets lit on fire, then his head gets split in half and then he explodes) there is a crappy villain death (Sub-Zero has a bucket of water thrown at him and he turn into an ice cube) And check out the Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-ManInRubberSuit they got to play 'Goro',

I AM A GIANT MUPPET

What tips the scales in the direction of awesome is the performance of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Shang Tsung. This man was born to shout FINISH HIM, and he does. With great frequency. He also says FATALITY, FLAWLESS VICTORY, YOUR SOUL IS MINE and, my personal favorite, after Raiden says "Look, it has begun!" he screams IT HAS BEGUN. I could listen to this man read the phone book, as long as he was shouting it in a super intense voice.

Another great moment is when he promises "a taste of things to come", which involves a bunch of extras disrupting a banquet dinner in order to clear a path for Sub Zero to freeze some guy for no reason.

Multiple times during the 100 minutes, techno blares and ninjas fight each other in competent-but-not-mind-blowing PG-13 kung fu. And this is what it should be, it's what we came for. And by using the cg budget fleetingly and focusing more on two overgrown martial artists fighting in slow motion, the feeling you get when some guy totally gets his ass kicked in a somewhat credible way is not cringing, but is in fact satisfaction.

Of course, that assumes that what you WANT to watch is a bunch of kung fu fight set to techno, with a villain screaming FINISH HIM! But for the fans of Mortal Kombat, the game, that IS exactly what they wanted to watch. Yeah, some of the dramatic dialogue stinks ("Don't you dare do this to protect me, Johnny Cage!") but the over-the-top dialogue is fantastic ("Princess Kitana? The Emperor's Daughter?! She's over 10,000 years old!")

In other words, this star rating is not so much because it's a good movie (it's not) or even a great kung fu movie (it's not.) The movie works because, for once, damn it all, they didn't screw it up. I remember walking out of the theater as a kid, shouting "That was AWESOME!" My inner 14 year old still agrees. It may be trash, but it's good trash.

RATING: * * * (out of 5)

P.S. The director, Paul "W.S." Anderson, has made some movies that could charitably be called "God awful." They include Resident Evil, Soldier, and Alien vs. Preditor. Only two of his movies are worth a damn... namely, this one and Event Horizon. However, praise where praise is due... his action sequences are clear, easy to follow, have nice pacing and satisfying pay-offs. That he went onto make the incoherent (both visually and script wise) Resident Evil is a wonder.

P.P.S. The fan service still makes me smile, whether it's Scorpion shouting GET OVER HERE or Johnny Cage inexplicably having an autographed photo ready to throw down on an enemy's corpse. It didn't make any sense in the game, but it's awesome, and it belongs here.

I AM STILL AWESOME DESPITE BEING INTRODUCED IN THE EARLY 90'S

TERMINATOR: SALVATION REVIEW

Giant dick, meet Robocop Lite!

TERMINATOR: SALVATION Review

"I offer you my summary of the story: Guy dies, finds himself resurrected, meets others, fights. That lasts for almost two hours." -Ebert

And how!

A lot of effort went into this movie, from the special effects crew and the technicians. You can tell that the director, the unexplainably self-titled 'McG,' cares about the Terminator saga. But what a joyless slog it is. When Macbeth bitches, this is what he's talking about.

The plot is best explained as above. It's worked before, it doesn't work here. Let me focus on the details. First, Christian Bale's performance as John Connor is a failure. I didn't care about him at all. I didn't believe he was a messiah, I didn't believe he was a hero, I didn't even believe he was human. But I did believe he was an actor who knew the project he was working on was, how you say, not so good. Bale is Bruce Wayne. Bale is Batman. Hell, Bale is even Patrick Bateman. But Bale's John Connor is a one-note dick, a joyless emotional robot who speaks in his Batman voice THE ENTIRE MOVIE. His speech about losing our humanity is laugh-worthy. How can he inspire humanity when he can't even inspire a movie audience? Hell, we've followed Shia LeBouf to fight Megatron; but Bale's John Connor couldn't lead a bunch of drunken law students to McDonalds. WHICH IS VERY EASY TO DO.

So that's half of the movie shot. Next, we have Marcus Wright, or the cyborg with feelings. As every trailer has already told you, he thinks he's human, but he's not. This is foretold in a prologue that is laced with symbolism, or at least Helena Bonaham Carter owing someone a favor. Sam Worthington does what he can- I've never seen him before, but ad campaigns promise I will see him again- but his story has been told before, and better. His character is made of the newest parts, but his story is off the shelf Frankenstein-Robocop-Blade Runner. What does it mean to be a machine who thinks he is a man? According to this movie, it means you get really upset when Helena Bonham Carter lectures you about your programming.

This leads to the third, and ultimately biggest problem with T4: Skynet. The supposedly biggest, baddest terminator of them all. The spawn of mechanical Satan. And yet, god help me, she (for she is played by Ms. Carter) is the crappiest villain out of all the Terminator movies. She is machine evolution backwards: after first learning to build and develop the Governor of California as a killing machine, she is left with a bad bond villain speech. She is trying to kill John Connor, see, and all her other plans have failed... so she's going to keep his father in the future, Kyle Reese, locked up as bait for John Connor to come within their grasp. This involves a convoluted plot to LET John Connor sneak in to Skynet, so it can... let him get close enough to destroy Skynet. Nevermind that the evil computer could shoot him countless times, or shoot his father, or use her Robocop-lite to shoot him, or any other ways that they could kill John Connor.

It's a dumb plan. Not only is not worth of supposedly the first computer to attain self-awareness, it's not worthy of Die Hard 2. So, basically, we have John "the giant dick" connor and Marcus "I'm not as interesting as I look" Wright fighting Sky "I'm about as smart as the villain in National Treasure" Net. Whoop de shit.

Let's be clear. This isn't Wolverine. The special effects are top notch, the plot is relatively straightforward, there are fewer lines that inspire huge groans and there are no musicians showing up in unexplainable costumes. It is competentBut if you're going to make a 200 million dollar popcorn movie (like Iron Man) and have zero moments of levity or self-parody (like Dark Knight), you better know what you're doing. You better have characters you care about, you better have a point and you better think things through. Explosions, even well done explosions, are not enough.

Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe I need more than just a constant series of explosions. Then again, maybe not- I'm the guy who liked Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard and Starship Troopers. I got nothing against robots beating the crap out of each other. But if you don't care about the tiny little people running around, or if the robots aren't named "Optimus Prime", after a point, it's just noise. And not even real noise; most of it is computer generated noise.

You did, McG. You made Michael Bay look good. I cared more about the characters in Armageddon than any of the survivors in this hunk of expensive junk.

RATING: * * (out of 5)

P.S. Arnold does make a cameo thanks to the 200 million dollar budget, without actually being in the movie. It's awesome, and the closest thing than a real Terminator moment we get.

P.P.S. The resistance has remarkably uneven powers. Sometimes they can summon air force bombers on radar, other times, they have to resort to short wave radios. Sometimes they have to hide on a submarine, sometimes they can have open air force bases. This either means that Skynet is even more incompetent than we thought, or (more likely) the screenwriters really didn't think about anything other than 'oh yeah, this would be cool.'

Vote Schwarzenegger.

STAR TREK: REVIEW

Nerds rejoice: Space is fun again.

I'm serious. Space, and by space I mean lots of ships flying through it very quickly, hasn’t been for fun years. I don’t mean just Star Trek movies. Think about it: Star Wars I-III. Alien vs. Predator I and II. Wing *shudder* Commander. By my count, the last good space movie was The Fifth Element. That was in 1996. There’s been a lot of pain in terms of the watching spaceships explode department. It’s been crappy acting, effects, and George Lucas screenwriting the past 12 years.

All of that ends now. Star Trek may not be brilliant cinema, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. It is also shiny, well-paced and a lot of things go boom. This already makes it superior summer entertainment. But as an added bonus at no extra cost, the dialogue induces no vomiting!

In fact, not only is the dialogue good, the acting is better. This is more than a pleasant surprise, it’s a new standard. Put it this way: you might have thought, while watching Attack of the Clones and wincing at the horrific acting and amazingly dull dialogue, “well, it’s the price I pay for watching a spaceship movie.” Now it is clear that, no, we can have our space and have acting too. J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek proves those George Lucas’s new Star Wars movies just plain sucked.

Oh, Star Trek ain’t perfect. The plot is (at times) a coat-rack to which to hang lots of bang, zoom and boom. The villain is pretty standard issue angry ugly guy. There is some business with creatures on an ice planet that seems forced. Time travel is used to duct tape over plot holes, some embarrassingly large. The movie doesn’t really have a central idea or concept. And five bucks to anyone who can tell me what the hell Winonna Ryder is doing in this movie.

But honestly? Who cares? The badass more than pays back the meh. The special effects are amazing, everything looks real or at least fun. It's never boring. The younger Kirk and Spock are excellent. We like them. We want to watch them do more. We see why they clash, and why they are friends.

The other original crew members are fun, too. Simon “Hot Fuzz” Pegg and John “Harold and Kumar” Cho do not disappoint, but special credit goes Karl “Doom” Urban, who is spot on as Bones McCoy. (Yes, he says “Damn, it Jim!” Yes, it’s awesome.)

The story also has surprises, some fun, some nasty. We’ve seen planets blow up in Star Trek before, but it’s usually followed by some time travel to save the day. Not this time. Like I said, bang, zoom and boom. But unlike most space movies, the boom and bang parts have real consequences. So lo and behold, when the special effects go nuts, you actually care. And, to your surprise, you do.

It's the summer. Movies are supposed to be fun, we also hope they will be good. Seeing Star Trek after Wolverine is like someone giving you a cold corona with a lime after you accidentally drank a skunked can of Papst Blue Ribbon at a bbq. It may not be perfect in form or execution, but god damn, did you need it.

RATING: * * * * (out of 5)

P.S. Lots of fun references for fans here. My favorite was seeing Kirk’s fabled Kobayashi Maru test. Over the top? Yes. But fun.

P.P.S. Leonard Nimoy is the classiest man to ever wear rubber ears.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE: REVIEW

Strike a pose.

X-MEN 4 REVIEW

How bad is X-men Origins: Wolverine (aka X4?)

Would you believe that Wolverine’s getting his claws is handled in about 4 minutes, with some of the worst dialogue since Fantastic Four?

Would you believe that a good half of Wolverine’s life is handled with a montage of him fighting in the Civil War, World Wars I and II and Vietnam? Would you believe this is also the credit sequence? That there is no explanation for why he’s lived, oh, say 200 years without aging past Hugh Jackman?

Would you believe that they got Will.i.am to play a mutant? Would you believe they gave him a funny hat to wear, for no reason?

How about Ryan Reynolds to play a mutant ninja? Would you believe he actually found a worse superhero movie to be in than Blade: Trinity?

Or the introduction of The Blob, where Wolverine calls him “Bub,” and the blob turns and says “Did you just call me…. BLOB?!” (Give Hugh Jackman some credit, the look on his face during this scene is priceless)

Would you believe they got this guy (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404111/) to play the chief villain? I remember him from CSI and I actually saw Silver City, he sucked then, he’s worse now.

Would you believe that on at least two occasions (Meghan thought 3), Wolverine casts his eyes into the heavens and screams “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”?

Yeah, it’s that bad.

An prequel is always an odd thing. They assumes that we know enough about the characters to a) care enough to know the back story and yet b) care without knowing the backstory. A Wolverine Prequel isn’t necessarily a bad idea, as a big plotline in movies 1 and 2 is, hey, where did he get those wonderful toys? We find out, and man, is it stupid.

Jackman looks lost, all of his charisma and most of his edge drained from previous performances in X and X2. It’s one thing when Wolverine doesn’t give a damn about anyone, and then occasionally does the right thing. It’s another when, in this movie, he’s constantly having to be the good guy who just wants to settle down to a peaceful life of lumberjacking. (I shit you not.) In other words, he’s bland, devoid of wit and boring.

Liev Schriber does what he can as the semi-villain, but Sabretooth has always been a one dimensional character for me. There may be comics, unread by me, that add depth. That depth is not to be found here. Basically he gets mad and rips stuff apart; his motivations unclear, save for desiring to beat up Wolverine.

The rest of the mutants exist to say their super cool names, and then get killed off. Some of them don’t even make it to the cool name part before getting offed. They either make no impression, or a not-so-good impression. Will.i.am, in particular, strikes me as a musician who wandered onto the set, and demanded a funny hat. The kid they got to play Gambit, the less said, the better.

It’s really kind of depressing, how this movie forgets the principle of a team of baddasses. You remember the principle of the team of baddasses.

a) introduce a hero.
b) Introduce a team of badasses to surround the hero, with other powers.
c) Introduce a threat that, individually, could kill the hero and every one of the team of baddesses… unless they come together as a team.
d) The team comes together or splits apart when facing this threat
e) Profit.

In this case, our team is introduced and dispensed with so quickly they barely get to leave a mark. It plays like a demo reel (this guy uses guns; THIS guy uses swords!) This means we get all the clichés without any of the enjoyment.

It all winds down to a final confrontation between Wolverine and a member of the team, who, again, was introduced and left behind so quickly that we forget he’s even in the movie. The final fight is nothing more than actors pretending to hurt each other in front of a green screen, and since we know that most of them can heal after getting stabbed, it’s pretty much a race to suckville. No points for guessing if Wolverine survives.

Any commentary on what it means to be a mutant is lost. Any attempt to make the consequences felt is laughable. The twists, when they come, are lame. If you actually see the movie (and you shouldn’t), see which twist you like less: how Woverine was set up, or what the villains are actually up to. Not much else to report, except that the special effects are not very good… which is odd, considering how much money this movie cost.

Which brings me to the final insult. How bad is X4? The real barometer isn’t X3; because that movie had the burden of trying to deliver on the promise of X1 and X2… and failed miserably. There were expectations with X3. They still had Ian McKellan in X3. There was a failure of competency with X3.

Consider X4 an attempt to reboot the series, after all, only two of the major characters are still in it (three if you count the villain.) So how bad is X4? From the special effects to the embarrassing, miscast acting and the awful plot twists, it’s as bad as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Yeah, I went there.

GRADE: * (out of 5)

P.S. Young Cyclops is in this movie. He gets more to do than he did in X3. Still lame.

P.P.S.: There’s a surprise cameo at the end by an older actor, who they decided to digitally make younger. The anti-aging effects are done so poorly that you’re not sure if you’re looking at the actor, a digital dummy of the actor, or a Madame Tussaud’s Wax impression. Whatever they did in Benjamin Button, I am officially more impressed.

You may not think it's funny, but it is unquestionably a hat.