Upgraded To First Class

Like the Star Trek reboot of '09 X-Men First Class took a well worn film series aftter it's last installment--and  gives it a much needed boost..

The film takes the audience back to the early days of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender)  before they became mortal enemies as Professor X and Magneto respectively. Before the two former allies meet on screen--The film offers up backstory to explain why these 2 very powefull men chose very diffent paths in the end...

The bulk of the film set in 1962 when Mutants were first discovered to exist  Charles and Erik must recruit a team of to confront someone from the past Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) who--using his own force of Mutants--is hell bent on starting a nuclear war between the US and Russia

Hats off to director Matthew Vaughn and his team of writers--Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, and Jane Goldman--who succeed at doing the impossible. I'm famous for saying that Superhero films with one too many high powered characters runs the risk of bloating the story for spectacle as plot and character suffer. Not here From a story by former X-director Bryan Singer and Sheldon Turner, yes there's a of characters in FC--But each of them has a function in the film and serves the plot--given more than one moment in the spotlight on screen in the process Something that X-Men Origins: Wolverine DID NOT accomplish--having fewer main characters to deal with at that

The chemistry between McAvoy and Fassbender is just great as is that of Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult playing Mystique and Beast--It's not an exaggeration to say that they will be able to fill the shoes of the aged characters from the other films and "become them" if need be. It's also clear that Bacon had fun playing the bad guy here. after the heavy dramatic material he's done in recent years.

 January Jones, Rose Byrne Lucas Till, Zoë Kravitz, Álex González, Caleb Landry Jones, Jason Flemyng, Oliver Platt and Ray Wise round out this fine cast.

Visually the film took me back to the 6o's in great style--It was like watching a James Bond film of that era subbing super gadgets for super powers.

It should be noted that the film takes a few liberties with what's come before both on film and in the comics but on the whole everything else works so well that--while you may care about such things--if ya let it bother ya too much it will give you a headache To make up for it though there are some clever cameos to squeal over.

After doing last year's underrated superhero gem the hugely entertaining Kick-Ass--Vaughn proved to me that he could do a film like this--And now he's gone above and beyond that with the X-feature. A Summer must see...!