martine-12

Right off the bat you can tell that Bryan Singer isn't at the helm of this final(?) installation of the X-Men movies. The movie is a lot "clumsier" put together and lacks all the feeling that Singer put into the previous two movies.

Quite a few of the characters are either very black and white or act out of character and the story is either too simple and obvious or to obscure and inexplicable.

The actors put in a great performance but it's not enough as there's too little emotion most of the time and when there is emotion, it's so overblown that it gets embarrassing.

Kelsey Grammar does a pretty decent rendition of The Beast, even in the fighting scenes (although a fair bit is CGI). Why The Beast is in the movie to begin with is not entirely clear to me though.

The fight scenes are nice but they could have skipped the plot and just had 90 minutes of non stop fighting, the rest isn't even good enough as filler material.

Fans of the X-Men comics will no doubt be upset over how some of the characters are re-written to fit into the movie but that's the least of this movies worries.

See it if you've seen the other two or just want a decent superhero flick. Otherwise you shouldn't really bother.

The video game which the movie is based on is supposed to be quite good but that does not mean that the movie has to be any good, as a lot of previous video game to movie conversions have proved before (I'm looking at you, Uwe Boll!).

Despite the heritage of Mr (or is that Dr?) Boll the movie scores high grades from me (as you might have seen already). It's quite atmospheric and the town of Silent Hill makes a great backdrop for a horror movie.

There are certain aspects of the plot that is a bit cliché, and it would have been better to have the movie tell it than having a character explain it all to you three quarters into the movie, but on the whole it's no worse than any other movie of this kind.

The actors delivers a very convincing performance and there were times when I shouted at Rose Da Silva (Radha Mitchell) to get a move on instead of screwing around.

Silent Hill clocks in at roughly 2 hours but I never felt that the movie lost neither its pace nor its grip.

I'm not sure that the ending is the right one for this kind of movie but it didn't spoil the rest of the movie for me -- quite the contrary perhaps as I'm still pondering over it.

The movie has it's fair share of gore and blood but it has "just enough" to make it scary and there are very few scenes where it's explicit. Most of the time it's psychological terror and uncertainty that keeps you on your toes.

Robin Williams haven't done a lot of funny movies as of lately so I wasn't sure if I wanted to see this one. Now that I have I can't say that I regret it but my life isn't exactly better because of it either.

On and off both the movie and Williams excels, and I laughed out loud on a couple of occasions, but on the whole the movie feels like The Griswolds on yet another vacation, only not as funny.

If you enjoy slapstick there are quite a few moments in the film that you will like and most of the time Williams is capable of pulling it off. There are times when everything just falls flat on it's face though.

The best character in the movie is Travis Gornicke, played by Jeff Daniels. The entire Gornicke family is rather amusing, although they become a bit predictable as well.

As for the Munro family, they are extremely predictable and I don't think that anyone will be surprised at how the movie ends.

One thing to mention is that they drive that poor RV like there's no tomorrow and seeing it take corners with screeching wheels and flying through the rugged mountain terrain is what I remember best from the movie.

Which is kinda sad, although the title of the movie indicates that the RV is the actual star.

It's good family fun, without any real surprises and offending plot twists. Don't expect another Toys or Birdcage though.