Mutant Mischief

X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Directed by Brett Ratner

Bryan Singer's sly, foppish hijinks in the previous X-Men movies are now replaced by director Brett Ratner's straight-boy clunkiness. X-Men 3: The Last Stand wears out the Marvel comics' allegory for teenage alienation. Ratner has no style; he merely sets up the predictable f/x. It gets tiresome watching these freakishly-gifted mutants fight government troops who fire back hypodermics filled with normal-making serum. Showing no feeling for what made the mutants empathetic, Ratner fails his cast. Plus, he seems sexually panicked by the new, androgynous mutant, Angel (Ben Foster). Ratner's cliched exposition (like Ron Howard's) suggests visual slang; doggerel people mistake for expression. That's why they can't grasp the progressive syntax of Chen Kaige's The Promise, where myth and reality blend magnificently. Ratner drops every chance he gets to astonish.

The moment Angel unfurls his wings should be a highlight, like John Philip Law cradling Jane Fonda in Barbarella-at once heroic, erotic and mythic. Photographic realism requires that fantasy films have spiritual imagination or visual wit; X-Men 3 is as humorless as a Star Wars prequel. The paint has peeled off this toy.

Alan Cumming hasn't returned to resume Nightcrawler (the series' finest characterization). Unfortunately, flamboyant British actors Patrick Stewart, as the balding pedant Xavier, and Ian McKellan, as megalomaniac Magneto, don't help. They're two kinds of ham: chops and hind-quarters. Specializing in histrionic villains, McKellan follows The DaVinci Code by playing X-Men 3's equally mockable bad guy.

Two Ian McKellan films in one year is excessive. What's next for him, Dracula? Bela Lugosi was subtler.