X-Men: First Class Review

I’ll admit I wasn’t terribly excited when I first heard about “X-Men: First Class.”

How could I be? It was coming off the low point that was “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and — besides Professor X, Magneto and Mystique — it was going to feature a bunch of C-list mutants I didn’t know. I even derisively referred to it as “X-Men Babies.”

So it was an especially pleasant surprise for me to find that “First Class” is actually one of the best movies of the year.

The movie (alternate title: “When Erik Met Charles”) follows the exploits of Holocaust survivor Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) as he grudgingly teams up with telepathic Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his crew to stop powerful mutant Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) from triggering World War III in the early 1960’s and wiping humans off the face of the Earth.

“First Class” chronicles the formation of Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and, more importantly, both the origin and disintegration of Charles and Erik’s friendship.

In fact, the best thing about the movie is that it gives equal weight and credibility to the beliefs of Charles (who wants to peacefully co-exist with humans) and Erik (who is probably a little uncomfortable with how much he agrees with Shaw’s philosophy).

On top of all that, director Matthew Vaughn — hitting his second straight comic book movie home run following last year’s “Kick-Ass” — stages the whole thing like mod, 1960’s spy caper. (No accident, since the Cold War is a major plot point.)

At first, it was a little jarring seeing McAvoy’s Xavier macking on some girl at the pub (and, you know, walking…and with hair), but once we got to see his more compassionate side (toward his students, even toward his enemies) it was incredibly easy to imagine McAvoy’s Charles becoming Patrick Stewart’s Professor X.

Still, I think the movie belongs to Fassbender, who has been very good in a number of movies (especially “Inglorious Basterds”) but becomes a movie star in “First Class.” Erik is fueled by revenge in this movie, but Fassbender never prevents us from seeing the charisma, flair and hints of humor that eventually make Magneto such a powerful figure.

Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”) leads the younger portion of the cast as Raven, who becomes Charles’ adopted sister and eventually grows up to be shape-shifter Mystique. The conflict between assimilating into the human world and letting their mutant freak flag fly plays out most obviously with Raven, and Lawrence does a good job. Nicholas Hoult (the kid from “About a Boy”!) also does a nice job as future Beast Hank McCoy. The rest of the young cast don’t get much of a character arc, but Vaughn finds time to give each mutant their moment in the spotlight. With so many characters, it’s impossible to serve all of them, so a few got the short end of the stick. (Like Rose Byrne’s Moira MacTaggert.)

The bad guys, meanwhile, are led by Kevin Bacon with a, “Wait a minute — I’m actually the biggest star in this movie!” swagger. Unfortunately, he gets relatively weak support from a couple of mostly mute mutants (Azazel and Riptide) and January Jones as Emma Frost, who is so wooden that I just wished she was mostly mute. On the bright side, her bras are the clear front runners for Best Supporting performance at this year’s Oscars.

Now, I may not be a comic book aficionado, but even I realize that all the characters in “First Class” don’t necessarily belong in this timeline and that their relationships don’t necessarily match up with what’s been established by the source material. Hell, despite the fact that “First Class” picks up right where the very first “X-Men” began, “First Class” isn’t even a slave the previous movies’ continuity. (It basically pretend like the beginning of “X-Men: The Last Stand” never happens…and I’m ok with pretending that movie never happened.)

Besides, there have been so many alternate universes and timelines in the X-Men comics over the years, who can possibly say what character belongs where?

More importantly, the movie is so damn smart, stylish and entertaining (there are a couple of very playful cameos) that I don’t care.

X-Men: First Class…A-