Movie reviews are tricky little suckers, aren’t they?  The only thing a movie review has ever encouraged me to do is not see a movie.  The reviewer either lambastes the movie, calling out all its inconsistencies and pointing out to the point of ridiculousness how much they disliked it, or they praise it to high heaven until you’re convinced it’s too good to watch.

For much the same reason that I rarely feel inclined to watch the movies that win the Academy Award for “Best Picture,” if a movie is too highly reviewed I’m convinced it’ll be boring, too much of a movie that’s a movie for the sake of being a movie (I should probably shove the word ‘movie’ in here a couple more times, don’t you think?).  Of course there’s an art to film making, but does that mean I want to ooh and aah over camera angles while I’m eating pizza and watching a movie on a Friday night?  Nope.

All rabbit trails aside, if Wes and I want to see a movie I usually make a point of avoiding movie reviews about said movie.  I really don’t want to be turned off a movie before I’ve ever seen it, and I especially don’t want to be aware of every flaw in the movie while I’m watching it.  Too much criticism will ruin a good time every time.

Unfortunately for me, I was ambushed by a review of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie on Friday morning.  I was driving to work and it popped onto the radio and I couldn’t turn away.  The reviewer had two things to say: The CGI is horrible and it wasn’t that great of a movie.

I shook my head in sadness and conveyed these thoughts to Wes.  We are not made of money and, as such, have to choose our date movies carefully.  He felt confident about the movie, and I felt confident in his confidence, so off to the movies we went.

I have to tell you, I enjoyed myself.  It’s an interesting story full of interesting characters and I thought the movie was a lot of fun.  It kept me entertained, at no point did I wonder how long I’d been sitting there, and there was really only one point where I felt the CGI looked unfinished.  That one point did not detract from the movie experience for me personally, though, so I guess there’s that.

If you like X-Men, and enjoyed the previous three movies, I think you’ll enjoy this one.  It has plenty of action, strong supporting characters, and a story that’s easy to understand without lapsing into snoozeville.  Is it the best movie ever made?  No.  Does it have the best music and the most convincing actors/actresses?  No.

The music’s pretty generic and I was not wild about the way a couple of the actors played their parts.  The nice thing is that the music was unobtrusive so you barely noticed it and the actors I didn’t like spent very little time onscreen.  The movie is what it is: A comic book movie.  In my humble opinion, it’s a terrific movie to go see if you like comic book movies and feel like being entertained for awhile.