Wolverine

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
"It's the story of how Wolverine became Wolverine. Do  you really need a summary?"

4 stars

I love movies based on comic books. There's action and comic relief and great characters. I especially like origin stories and prequels because you get to learn the backgrounds of your favorite heroes.

Wolverine (the movie) is a little melodramatic and anvil-y*. But it's based on a comic book, so what did you expect? The good thing is, since Wolverine (the character) is basically part of the pop culture canon, we don't get a lot of unnecessary exposition and explanation. Yes, essentially the whole move is exposition, but the movie doesn't waste time on things like what a mutant is or explaining the whole X-Men universe.  If you don't know who the X-Men are or if you don't care, this movie isn't for you. If you're like me, you'll love seeing cameos from your favorite mutants (Hi Gambit!), no matter how much the actor's accent wavers (Hi Taylor Kitsch!), and you might even squeal a little bit at the final scene (after the credits).

Is this movie gonna win any Oscars? Hell no. But it's enjoyable, and that's good enough for me. Not every movie needs to change my life - I'm happy to be simply entertained for a few hours.

*Anvils, anvil-y, anvilicious: Referring metaphorically to the cartoon practice of dropping a big, heavy anvil onto a character. When I use the term, it means that a movie uses really heavy-handed and obvious plot points or movie techniques to get a point across, rather than giving the audience some credit for being able to figure out subtle nuances.