Man ... you sprout a few feathers and all of the sudden you're "sick": "X-Men: The Last Stand"

Busy holiday weekend, what with company Friday night, Saturday night plans and an out-of-town wedding Sunday evening. (Yep, a wedding on Sunday. That's a Jewish couple for you. Mazel tov!) All this fun left me a bit tired this afternoon, but not enough to miss a chance to see what our favorite band of mutants was up to these days.

Although I never read the comics -- I preferred Spider-Man, myself -- the first two X-Men movies were generally entertaining. The first had some awkward, even bad dialogue, but seeing how Wolverine came to the group was all right. The second movie was better -- more nuanced, both in plot and character development -- albeit too long and sometimes too busy. But in both cases, the movies were easy to watch, and I've seen each a few times.

The third falls neatly into place behind Nos. 1 and 2. This time around, someone has discovered a "cure" for the mutant gene, which means for better or worse, mutants can become normal people. This causes some angst among the wide array of mutants out there, with the good guys unsure but willing to talk it out, while the bad guys not only refuse the cure but declare war on those seeking to dispense it.

The story has potential, and it's good to get the perspective from mutants like the furry blue Beast (Kelsey "Down Periscope" Grammer) and Rogue (Anna "Not Doing the Curvy Cute Thing For Once" Paquin), whose touch kills people. Sure, a mutant who looks like Halle Berry don't need no stinkin' cure, but if I looked like a Sesame Street character, I might drink the Kool-Aid.

Complicating this is the return of Jean Grey (Famke "Still Hot but Not as Much as in 'GoldenEye'" Janssen), who emerges from the lake where she died in "X2" but is more cuckoo in the head, making her powers dangerous to humankind. Well, mutantkind, too, as we see. Top bad guy Magneto (Ian "That's Sir Ian to You" McKellen) wants this new Jean on his side, but top good guy Charles Xavier (Patrick "Make It So" Stewart) hopes to keep her on the side of right. Oooh, the tension.

This mutant war delivers some decent action scenes and a host of other freaks with different powers. It would have been cool to see them playing "But can you do this?" in their spare time. Or maybe a "Mystery Men"-type audition with B-level mutants showing useless powers. "I am the Thermostatter, able to raise a room's temperature by three, even four degrees!" The inner battle of Jean Grey and its consequences also wasn't bad. You definitely get a sense of finality with this movie, and I'm not surprised to hear that producers now plan to tackle spinoffs, i.e. "Claw This: Wolverine's Bogus Journey."

That said, nobody will confuse this script with "Casablanca," and "Last Stand" is a step back in giving characters more depth. The above cases of Beast and Rogue aren't really developed, and another new character, Angel, also seems largely dismissed after being introduced with a flourish. Then we have the little mutant who produces the "cure." His plight is shown but not really explored, it that make sense.

Normally I'm all for trimming bloated blockbusters, but this movie isn't that long -- 104 minutes -- and another 5-10 minutes might have helped and still kept it shorter than the 133-minute run time of "X2." Worse comes to worse, we could have dialed back the noise a bit in favor of dialogue and emotion. I know, I know ... sounds like sacrilege. Michael Bay would have my head.