Muppet babies

X-Men: First Class

Crit

Dear Lisa--I address this to you because you forced me against my will to see the dreadful X-Men 3: The Last Stand, then didn't even try to persuade me to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine, though you saw it, for reasons (or a reason) that will become obvious momentarily to readers over your shoulder.

So I'm here to tell you (and you, and you) that this reboot of the series is rollicking good fun, never mind that your beloved Hugh appears only in a don't-blink (but absolutely perfect) cameo. (Had I been involved, the cameo would have been exploited for a couple of seconds more, but I can't tell you about it until you've seen the film or are certain you're not going to, so it follows in invisible ink--to see it, double-click the space to define the paragraph.)

After the end credits, we should have seen this: interior, the bar Charles and Erik visited earlier. On the same stool occupied then, we see a familiar form crumpled over, face down. Slow push in to the unconscious man's fist, where we see the glint of his partly extruded claws.

Lots of nice foreshadowing of stuff we already know about here--we really didn't need multiple jokes about Charles Xavier's lush head of hair, but the first look at a familiar helmet on the wrong head (and the why of the helmet) is brilliant, and some care is taken to establish the motivations for the various mutants to line up w/ Xavier or with Magneto.

I've never been a fan of the callow James McAvoy, but since the young Charles is himself callow (though always brilliant, of course)--a college man of the late '50s and early '60s who (are they allowed to do this in the movies anymore?) enjoys a drink but never lets the drink get the better of him--the casting works well. And heartthrob Michael Fassbender--last seen as Rochester in Jane Eyre--is convincing as Erik, except for the question of why a Polish Holocaust survivor has an Anglo-Irish accent.

Trailers

• Green Lantern--Actually surprised by how promising this looks.
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes--And this looks splendid.
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--And this will give you whiplash--it's so music-video helter skelter that even though I recognized Daniel Craig repeatedly, I was too disoriented to realize what I was watching until near the end. So I can't really report yet whether Rooney Mara is an adequate successor to Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth. But it certainly seems to have some adrenaline pumping through it, and I'm inclined to trust David Fincher if not to get it right at least to get it interesting.