As a flashy summer movie, it satisfies with Dramatic Showdowns ™, Impossible Odds ™ (did anyone else think that the 6 good X-Men “holding the line” on Alcatraz were just ridiculously outnumbered against the scores of Magneto’s bad guys on the bridge?), Wrenching Sacrifices ™, et hoc genus omne.

New characters like Kitty Pryde (played cutely and capably by Ellen Page, who I kept mistaking for the castrating pervert she played in Hard Candy) and Beast (Kelsey Grammer, of all people, doing a good job!!) kept my interest. They kind of compensated for the fact that the script writers ruthlessly killed off or neutralized the kinkiest characters (R.I.P., Magneto and Mystique). Thus the movie was left to boring personages like Famke Janssen’s Phoenix, whose superpower is apparently standing around in a catatonic manner. With such a large cast, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, whose power is ass-kicking while wisecracking, and Halle Berry’s Storm, whose power is looking great in pleather, sorely lacked time to strut their stuff.

Overall, I thought X3 was a good movie, but not good enough to fully engage me. Like the subject line says, I couldn’t care less about the morality of a mutant cure. I was too busy identifying loose plot threads.

I’m waiting excitedly for Superman Returns (June 28), The Devil Wears Prada (June 30) and, most of all, Pirates of the Caribbean II (July 7)!! Oh yeah…and whenever The Da Vinci Code comes to the cheap seats, I’m going to mock its pants off.