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Film by FFWD Staff X-Men starring Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry directed by Bryan Singer opens Friday, July 14 The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle starring Robert De Niro, Jason Alexander and René Russo directed by Des McAnuff now playing Unsatisfied, but not sure why, it took roadkill for me to figure out what’s wrong with X-Men. Partway thru The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (confession of a cheapskate sinner: I snuck into a matinee after the X-Men media screening), our intrepid heroes are flattened by a steamroller. Always the philosopher, the wafer-thin Bullwinkle wonders aloud: "Is this movie getting..." – Rocky blanches at the inevitable pun, as obvious and unstoppable as the passing steamroller – "...two-dimensional?" Devilishly self-referential and meta-layered (and, yes, punned to the gills), the original Jay Ward cartoon series was mindbogglingly ahead of its time, offering avant-pop delights during the height of the Cold War. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle perfectly captures the TV show’s frantic mix of cockeyed corn and razor wit. The movie finds moose-ünd-squirrel in Frostbite Falls, living in clumsily animated retirement. Meanwhile, in a hungry bid for "new" material, a movie producer (Janeane Garofalo) accidentally pulls the evil Fearless Leader and his hapless Potsylvanian henchfiends from cartoonland into the real world. (Utilizing true Rocky & Bullwinkle logic, Garofalo literally pulls the trio from one world into the next, and no further explanation is ever offered.) Freed from animated purgatory, the evil trio are transformed into humans: Robert De Niro as Fearless Leader, René Russo as Natasha Fatale, and Jason Alexander as Boris Badenov. Fearless Leader immediately plans world domination via RBTV ("Really Bad Television"), mind-numbing programming that will transform America into a nation of zombies. (Reminiscent of the "CCCP-1" episodes of SCTV, the RBTV lineup is a grey banquet of iron curtain entertainment. A particular standout is a series entitled Three Spies And Their Horse Who Will Also Be A Spy.) A bighearted FBI agent (Piper Perabo) is enlisted to bring Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose into the real world – unlike the bad guys, R and B remain in cartoon form. However, as Fearless Leader angrily points out, it’s not at all like Roger Rabbit. (Wink-wink.) It may not aim high, buswinkle succeeds at what it sets out to do (smart slapstick, egghead vaudeville, etc.). The writing is brilliant, and the over-the-top performances are right on the money. In an orthodontic triumph, Alexander and Russo manage to chew both scenery and stereotypical accents – and be entertaining while doing so. Whilst watching R&B, one question burned in the back of my peanut: why is this so good, but X-Men is so... so... not exactly bad, but not exactly good? The long-awaited X-Men movie sticks close to the original comic book premise. As Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) gravely intones in the opening voiceover, "Mutation is the key to evolution" and the human race is slowly evolving. The rub: non-evolving humans (i.e. reg’lar folk unable to, like, shoot lasers from their eyeballs) don’t take kindly to no mutants. This classic Stan Lee twist distinguished 1960s Marvel comics from their golly-gee predecessors: everyone loved Superman, but Spider-Man was a hunted freak. X-Men opens with a real-world twist on this Persecuted Other theme. Told in flashback, a young Jewish boy and his family are led into a Nazi death camp. Separated from his parents, the boy’s anguish unleashes an astounding magnetic power, twisting a fence into a barbed-wire pretzel. (The analogy doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. Are Jews mutants? Are gentiles therefore "normal"? Er, uhm.) Cut to the not-too-distant future. A misguided senator (Bruce Davison) is leading an anti-mutant campaign. Mutants walk among us, he tells an appreciative crowd, and they must be registered like the weapons they are. Professor Xavier, himself a powerful telepath, believes that humans and mutants can live together in harmony. He runs a secret private school, a welcoming place where young mutants can hone their gifts free from persecution. (One student dubs it "Mutant High.") On the sly, Prof. X also runs a team of crimefighting superheroes: Cyclops (James Marsden), Storm (Halle Berry), and the cleverly named Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). The yin to Xavier’s yang is his old friend Magneto (Ian McKellen), whose childhood experience in the concentration camps has soured him on humanity. He, too, has assembled a team of mutant muscle: Toad (Ray Park), Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos). Meanwhile, a young mutant (Anna Paquin as Rogue) discovers her skin is fatal to the touch. (Mutations reveal themselves during puberty, explaining why Rogue’s poison-ivy tendencies have gone heretofore undetected.) After inadvertently showing her boyfriend the meaning of "kiss me deadly," Rogue sets off for self-imposed exile in the wilds of Canada. There she hooks up with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a sullen loner and the undefeated bar-brawl champ of Northern Alberta. In addition to a bad attitude, Wolverine is unusual because of: (a) his amazing regenerative powers, and (b) the 12-inch metal claws which extend/retract from his knuckles. So Wolverine and Rogue are driving along in his pickup truck when they crash into a fallen tree. (The accident is extraordinary only in that Halle Berry wasn’t driving.) A battle ensues between Wolverine and Magneto’s minions, and the X-Men save the day. Wolverine joins the good guys, Rogue enrolls in Mutant High, and the stage is set for a battle royale. Silly? Yep, but no moreso than a talking moose. The trouble with X-Men is that it hopelessly clings to reality, as summed up by one scene. Rogue has run away from the school, and Prof. X hooks himself to a psychic amplifier to track her down. After a physically draining session involving a weird helmet, Xavier solemnly reports back to his colleagues (actual quote): "She’s at the train station... a few miles west of here." I mean, it took an elaborate sequence (complete with fantastic machinery) to determine... what, exactly? That a teenage runaway didn’t get very far on foot? Fantasy and the banal: what a super team! Both X-Men and Rocky & Bullwinkle are self-conscious films. But whereas R&B revels in its self-consciousness – at one point, Whoopie Goldberg (as Judge Cameo) charges the duo with 18 counts of criminal punning – X-Men is simply uncomfortable in its skin. Adapting a cartoon to the big screen isn’t the same as adapting a comic book. If done properly, live-action films can capture the kinetic feel of animation. (Rocky & Bullwinkle is impeccable in this department, going so far as to rig automobiles to wobble and weave like they would in the cartoons.) And even though the actors create, at best, really good caricatures (there’s no worry of Fearless Leader entering into the pantheon of De Niro creations), all the other cartoon elements (music, pacing, quick-cut edits) can be reshaped into one helluva silver-screen time-passer. Getting back to Bullwinkle’s "two-dimensional" comment, R&B revels in its limitations, but X-Men gets bogged down. Comic books are a static medium to begin with (they don’t even have other elements, just ink on the page), and just don’t make for good movies. Superman (1978) worked because I was eight at the time. The first two Batman movies (1989, ‘92) worked only because of Tim Burton’s eccentric visual style, and even that seemed compromised. (Let’s face it, Batman wasn’t as "dark" as everyone insisted it was.) Comics-as-source-material might make a good stepping-off point for directors of strong, iconoclastic vision, but they don’t cut it on their own. Superhero movies take a ridiculous premise (in itself, fine) and try to marry it to reality. Real people do not look good in superhero tights. (Remember – shudder – the live-action Spider-Man TV show and its saggy-assed crimefighter?) It’s that simple. X-Men knows this, and instead opts for matching leather jumpsuits. When Wolverine complains about the costume, Cyclops sarcastically asks if he’d prefer something in yellow spandex. More than just a nod to trainspotters (in the comics, Wolverine wears yellow spandex – ha ha!), the comment hangs uncomfortably in the air. When faced with the task of "living" up to impossibly-proportioned illustrations, are leather jumpsuits really any better than yellow spandex? A similar feeling dogs the following supposed-to-be-funny exchange between Wolverine and Rogue. Q: "What kinda name is Rogue?" A: "What kind of name is Wolverine?" This stuff plays way better on the page, completely removed from reality. But set it in front of a real-life New York City backdrop, and.,.. Forget Tom Cruise – the real mission impossible is making a successful, serious live-action superhero flick. (A notable exception would be the ‘60s Batman series, which took a Rocky & Bullwinkle approach to a comic book adaptation.) Rocky & Bullwinkle throws all serious aspirations to the wind, and prospers. When an FBI agent wonders if a White House mole is leaking top secret information, the film cuts to an actor wearing a suit, tie and completely fake-looking mole mask. (Stupid + funny = funny nonetheless.) Faced with the same challenge, a film like X-Men would have to conjure up a kinda-sorta totally realistic MoleMan, and stupid + unfunny = why bother? That said, X-Men does have a few good battle scenes, and nothing could make it a better movie. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s any good.

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