I would pay $3.50 to watch this movie
The problem with “X-2: X-Men United” is that it comes after a serious dearth of kick-butt action films. The last major film even remotely in this genre to be released was “Bulletproof Monk”, and that movie was about as popular as chocolate-covered fish testicles, which is really too bad as it was at least as good as “X-2” and, in my opinion, better. In other words, people are guaranteed to love this film and it will do really well in the box office because they are looking forward to the summer blockbusters and still discenchanted with the lack of winter blockbusters this year. “X-2” will do well for two weeks, and then “The Matrix Reloaded” opens and eats every movie out there alive.
A lot has already been made of “X-2”, and I have found it, in a word, pathetic. It just shows how trained people are to suck up each and every piece of just-above-mediocre garbage Hollywood will sling at them. Don’t get me wrong, this is a fun movie to watch, and it may even be the best Hollywood film in theaters right now, but it isn’t a superb piece of cinematic art.
As far as the breakdown, the acting is tolerable, and Halle Berry is much better in this movie than she was in the first (i.e. she doesn’t have an infamously terrible one-liner as her single memorable piece of dialogue: She doesn’t deliver ANY memorable dialogue.) The directing is pretty good, and everything looks nice and slick, but the editing for the fight scenes is broken. I mean, it’s one thing to have choppy editing for Nightcrawler teleporting around and kicking human butt, but to use that same editing “technique” for Wolverine vs. Kelly Hu (as “Yuriko Oyama”) is just another waste of Kelly Hu’s talents, although it might be covering up Hugh Jackman’s, who knows. The soundtrack is not memorable, and the plot is thankfully more intricate than the first movie, although still full of holes. The movie also had some foul one-liners, but those were very tolerable compared to the brutally blatant foreshadowing in this movie. When I say foreshadowing, I mean “advertisement for X-Men 3”, so sad.
For a short aside on Kelly Hu, it is really pathetic that she goes from a role as “tasty love interest for The Rock” in “The Scorpion King” to a bit role that doesn’t show her butt-kicking talents in “X-2”. Kelly, we KNOW you can kick butt, so quit taking these sad little roles and get in a Jackie Chan film or something.
With that out of my system, I’ll proceed to the plot holes. Largest and most egregious was the one almost at the tail end of the movie. Here we have a fancy jet full of superheroes with marvelous powers that is about to be washed away in a tidal wave of broken-dam runoff. One of the marvelous superheroes can freeze water just by using his magical ice ability. Another can create a mighty storm of any sort just by using HER magical superpower (in fact, she chilled a room down considerably shortly before in the movie). So, rather than use one of these obvious superheroes to stop the raging torrent of awful water (Storm was trying to kick-start the jet and Iceman was nowhere in the picture, I guess he was busy freezing the urinal), this brilliant assortment of superpowered mutants watches as Jean Grey holds off the torrent with her telekinetic powers long enough for the jet to take off. Never mind that she probably could have more easily lifted the jet itself rather than hold back millions upon millions of gallons of onrushing water…. And then she sinks beneath the waves, even though Nightcrawler earlier had rescued Rogue by warping out of the jet and back in… I guess he felt more like reciting the Bible while Cyclops and Wolverine moaned about their lady-love drowning. Ahem.
In any case, the movie is watchable and, in most parts, enjoyable. I would suggest watching this movie right now, but just use it as your backup movie in case you can’t get into a showing of “The Matrix Reloaded” in two weeks.