What better way to ring in the summer blockbuster season than with every one’s favorite X-Men superhero? Well, I can think of quite a few, but I’ll also bet $85 million on the fact that no one cares what I think.

Yes, the summer certainly ups the eye-candy level when it comes to theatrical movie releases, but this isn’t always a good thing.  Quite a few directors feel the need to take away the aspects of their films, such as…. well, acting, plot, intelligence.  These aspects are often replaced with exploding helicopters, ironic one-liners, skimpy outfits and even more exploding helicopters.

I really had low hopes even before Wolverine started up.  I mean, who actually enjoyed X-men 3?  Sure, X-men 1 and 2 set relatively high standards for what a comic book movie SHOULD be.  These low hopes were not only reinforced, but perhaps even lowered a tad more, especially when the Deadpool sequence started up.  But I digress.

From the get go, you know this is all about Wolverine, tracking his past and walking through how he became the person he is today.  Fighting in every major american war probably does something to your psyche, which would explain why his brother, Sabertooth (played by Liev Schreiber, not Tyler Mane) is such a grumpy bastard.  Once the tone is set, the movie quickly becomes a mess, taking you from locale to locale, trying to cram in as many new superheros as possible.

During the entire movie, you feel as if you’ve seen it all before and it’s probably because you have.  You are constantly bombarded by cliché after cliché, scratching your head as to the some of the decisions made by the director.  On numerous occasions, I actually murmured to myself “What the hell are they doing?” or “What is going on?”.  It feels like it was thrown together, while trying to capitalize on the obvious popularity of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.  As with a lot of the summer blockbuster ‘popcorn flicks’, I tried to switch my brain off, but I just couldn’t and I really shouldn’t have to.  Comic book movies can be well written, they can be smart and they can still be fun.

Synopsis : With a strong performance by Hugh Jackman and a convincing role played by the fantastic Danny Huston, it’s a shame to see this one crash and burn, in more ways than one. The stink left from X-Men 3 really hasn’t worn off and ‘Wolverine’ merely fans the sheets.