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90After undergoing some unfortunate mutations in recent years, a beleaguered Marvel movie property gets the smart, stylish prequel it deserves in X-Men: First Class.
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88In this cheerfully perverse origin tale of Magneto, Professor X and their mutant team, Vaughn delivers a fireworks display of action, smarts and fun, plus a touch of class from actors who can really act.
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88Most of the actors live their roles, and Fassbender (Rochester in the last "Jane Eyre") is superb as the wolflike, undisciplined assassin.
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83McAvoy and Fassbender are a casting triumph. These two have, yes, real star magnetism, both individually and together: They're both cool and intense, suave and unaffected, playful and dead serious about their grand comic-book work.
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80It's not the artistry of X-Men: First Class that's particularly striking; though it's finely crafted, the film feels less the product of a visionary director than of the Marvel movies machine working at maximum efficiency.
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80This prequel draws new energy from supersmart casting, plus the shrewd notion of setting the beginnings of the X-Men saga in the early 1960s.
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80Audacious, confident and fueled by youthful energy.
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75At least Erik/Magneto, as played by Michael Fassbender, is, well, magnetic.
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75That's partly why X-Men: First Class is such fanboy fun, as the script departs from official Marvel lore to invent a whole new "origin story" for the mutant ensemble.
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75This X- Men is indeed first class: an exciting, bold and thoroughly enjoyable summer blockbuster.
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75First Class happily delivers on the escapism and rich narrative texture the best of its predecessors have promised.
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75Fassbender plays Magneto as a supercool assassin with a completely understandable set of beefs. I spent most of the movie rooting for him, and would watch a "Magneto, 1960s Nazi Hunter" sequel in a second.
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75Another crowd-pleasing comic-book film designed to bring in new fans while gratifying the old ones.
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75An uncommonly polished and sophisticated superhero movie.
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75Director Matthew Vaughn, who did last year's delightful "Kick-Ass," doesn't do witty this time around, but he does keep up a spiffing pace while making the action blaze.
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75Perfectly fine summer folderol, epic enough on its own terms if not quite big enough to expand beyond its genre and matter to people who find it difficult to care about characters who spit gobs of flaming phlegm. I realize there are fewer and fewer of us, but we're a hardy band and stubborn.
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75X-Men: First Class still sings the praises of Marvel Studios' marvelous quality control of comic book movies. It's good, clean summer movie fun where the money they spend is up on the screen - with actors and effects - so that we won't mind spending our money on it.
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70So while X-Men: First Class at first takes its source material with just the right amount of self-deprecating seriousness, it founders in the second half, when it becomes overburdened with squirrelly plot mechanics and an excess of self-evident dialogue.
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70With its spy-on-spy globetrotting, old-fashioned villains, flirty but prematurely swinging minis and fan-boy bits (look for an eye-blink-fast tribute to "Basic Instinct" and a cameo from the cult actor Michael Ironside), the whole enterprise has an agreeable lightness, no small thing, given its rapidly moving parts.
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70X-Men: First Class isn't anywhere close to being a genre classic like "Spider-Man 2" or "The Dark Knight," but it is good enough to rejuvenate a franchise stuck on idle.
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May 26, 201170What the film does well, however, is grasp the tone and rhythm of the original comic books.
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67It's all vastly superior to Brett Ratner's scorched-earth "X-Men: The Last Stand," of course.
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63The easiest way to summarize my reaction to X-Men: First Class is with a shrug.
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63X-Men: First Class is a mutant movie, half fun and half fearsome. For those who have developed an immunity to fanboy hype, the contradictory traits may seem to weaken rather than strengthen this beast, but readers of the "X-Men" comics will hail an origin story as satisfying as "Thor."
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63An elaborate origins story with more datelines than an issue of Condé Nast Traveler (Oxford! Miami! Argentina! Poland!), X-Men: First Class has some fun trying to explain how Professor X, Magneto, and all those mopey mutants came to be.
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63X-Men: First Class is competent weekend entertainment. It is not a great comic book movie, like "Spider-Man 2," or a bad one, like "Thor." It is not in 3-D, which is a mercy.
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63Still, the deadliest single element in this film can be traced not to Bacon's character, but to composer Henry Jackson, whose music seems determined to kill us all with waves of dramatic nothingness.
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Jun 2, 201160Like Bryan Singer's X2 (2003), this fifth entry in the X-Men franchise is noteworthy for its gay-rights subtext and for its noted actors delivering comic book dialogue with Shakespearean portent. Otherwise it's indistinguishable from most other recent blockbusters.
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60It's big, bright, savvy, and so expansive you'll undoubtedly leave feeling you got your money's worth.
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60All you'd expect from an X-Men film (or spin-off, or prequel), but not all you'd hope for. It smacks of rush and compromise, but there's thankfully enough to make you feel optimistic about the series' future once more.
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50Uneven, occasionally silly, true, but it's also an improvement over 2006's "X-Men: The Last Stand."
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50These ludicrous but endearing moments of bro-bonding are all that sets this otherwise stock-issue superhero movie apart from its mass-produced brethren.
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50I was startled to look up the running time and discover that X-Men: First Class is only 104 minutes; the second half is so clunky it feels much longer.
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40It's just another franchise nonstarter to toss in the superstore superhero deal bin.
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40Too bad that First Class torpedoes its lofty intentions with flights of idiocy so wrongheaded as to be almost endearing.
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40A tedious two-plus hours. There were such possibilities in the origins idea.
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Jun 1, 201138Despite his apparent comfort with F/X-heavy projects, the obligations of duty to the brand are too much for Matthew Vaughn's strange, singular voice, which rarely has the chance to shape the film unmolested by a curiously bland script.
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Jun 3, 201130A cameo from an old-school X-Man only serves to remind how stylish and witty the first installment was a decade ago. Lacking a single memorable joke or striking image, First Class is as perfunctory and passionless as would-be franchise resurrections get.