MORE X-RATED THOUGHTS - I wasn't able to check out what other critics were saying about XXX before posting my review Friday morning. A look at the Tomatometer shows that it's almost an even split - 49% positive reviews, or 52 out of 107. Of course, that leaves 55 negative, including my own unfavorable reaction to the Vin Diesel-powered spy vehicle, which easily topped the box office over the weekend with $46 million. Signs dropped to second but faired well with $30 million.

L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan correctly diagnoses the movie as, "More busy than exciting, more frantic than involving, more chaotic than entertaining." Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum writes, "Even in the summertime, the most restless young audience deserves the dignity of an action hero motivated by something more than franchise possibilities."

Most critics who recommend XXX praise its muscular star: "The racially ambiguous Diesel cuts a fine action figure. He has the glacial swagger left over from his bouncer days and looks as if he's been bench-pressing Sylvester Stallone since he was 12," writes Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe. And Salon's Stephanie Zacharek calls Diesel "that rare creature -- an action hero with table manners, and one who proves that elegance is more than tattoo deep."

Easily the most surprising response has to be Roger Ebert's gushing 3 1/2 star review in the Chicago Sun-Times -- not just because he liked it that much, but because he liked it for the exact same reasons I started thinking about balancing my checkbook roughly 30 minutes in. He writes: "Director Rob Cohen and producer Neal H. Mortiz, who also made "The Fast and the Furious," follow the Bond formula so carefully this would be a satire if it weren't intended as a homage."

Ebert then proceeds to approvingly tick off the various ways XXX steals from Bond: (1) Villain in lair hidden within mountain, with faceless minions busily going about tasks; (2) a beautiful girl, former KGB, named Yelena (Asia Argento), who seems to be Yorgi's girlfriend but falls for Xander; (3) a techno-geek who supplies Xander with a trick gun and a customized GTO that has an arsenal on board; (4) stunts involving parachuting, mountains, avalanches and explosions; (5) a chase at the end to save the world, and (6), my favorite, the obligatory final scene where the hero basks in Bora Bora with the beautiful girl in a bikini, while his boss tries to persuade him to take another job.

I think calling XXX an homage to Bond gives Cohen and screenwriter Rich Wilkes too much credit. Isn't it more likely that they were simply too lazy/uninspired/unoriginal to give their "new kind of action hero," as Cohen described him in last month's Premiere, an action movie that was befitting such a new character? I'm guessing it was a lot easier to just crib from old Bond flicks, replace the Monty Norman score with Rammstein, then claim to have invented something radically different.

The fact is, save for a few poorly choreographed action sequences involving various extreme sports, XXX doesn't give us anything we haven't seen before. Perhaps if Cohen and company had been clever enough to go the satirical route and flat-out rebuke the Bond franchise -- the opening scene, where Diesel's tuxedo-clad predecessor is easily picked off by a sniper when he tries to blend in with the crowd at a hardcore industrial concert, effectively teases us with this possibility -- XXX would have been more entertaining.

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