by MARK SLUTSKY

Despite all there was to admire in Bryan Singer’s two X-Men movies, they both ultimately came up short as cinematic spectacles. Singer made a ton of good choices—the films were beautifully cast, refreshingly un-insulting to the audience’s intelligence and at times quite witty. But he never quite seemed to accept that what he was making, in the final equation, were big-budget summertime blockbusters. As action movies they just didn’t deliver, both films suffering from weak climaxes that didn’t provide the payoff you need in a superhero movie.

So when Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) signed on for the third, fans were appalled at this comparatively boorish choice, but I myself hoped the guy might bring a little oomph to the series. Say what you will, but for the most part Ratner has directed some very entertaining movies. If the movie had to lose a little class to get it to shake that ass, then hey, so be it.

But no. X-Men: The Last Stand, I’m sad to say, feels uncomfortably more like a direct-to-video sequel to the original films than any sort of exciting revamp. It’s a mish-mash of various competing plots: a big pharmaceutical company has discovered a “cure” for the gene that causes X-mutation at the same time that psychic X-woman Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who apparently died at the end of the last one, has returned to life. She’s imbued with super-mega telepathic and telekinetic powers, and she seems very confused, all the easier for Magneto (Ian McKellen) to guide her over to his side.

Also, there’s a bunch of new (to the movies) faces in the mix, like the blue-coloured brainiac Beast, who’s played by Kelsey Grammer, which actually makes a ton of sense considering that the sophisticated, bespectacled manimal was always the Frasier of the X-crew.

Lots happens here, technically—there’s some major deaths—but the movie mostly feels like a lot of b-movie characters chattering away unconvincingly, and the action scenes (with one exception) are shaky, uninspired and dumb. Under its new guidance the franchise has mutated all right, but not into something you really want to see.

X-Men: The Last Stand opens Friday, May 26

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