Captain America: The First Avenger: Critic Reviews

Captain America succeeds grandly where the others failed.

The picture is nothing, really, that you haven't seen before, but it's the definition of a square, competent, deliver-the-goods blockbuster.

Has a winningly pulpy, jaunty, earnest spirit.

The Captain isn't perfect, but he's the equal of Thor and loads better than the Green Lantern: he's the summer's pre-eminent superhero.

Yes, the characters are cartoonish (they're comic book heroes, after all), but this is the kind of old-fashioned popcorn entertainment summer is made for.

Evans brings just the right amount of confidence and aw-shucks modesty to Rogers, who surely counts as the most appealing Marvel hero.

Tommy Lee Jones isn't distraction enough from the reality that we've been sold a $140 million trailer for a different movie. The egg's a little rotten.

[A] hokey, hacky, two-hour-plus exercise in franchise transition/price gouging, complete with utterly unnecessary post-converted 3-D.

Need a top-notch comic-book movie to stop this summer's march of mediocre superheroes? "Captain America: The First Avenger," reporting for duty.

Captain America's metabolism, Peggy tells him, burns energy four times faster than the average person's. The movie's metabolism burns out.

Scrawny Steve is such a guileless and likeable little dude that his sweetness endures long past the super-sizing.

Captain America: The First Avenger is pretty good, insofar as it's not nearly as terrible as it seemed destined to be.

Captain America is not high art, but it is so unabashedly fun -- and such well-made fun -- that it is hard to not like and admire it for so steadfastly being what it is.

The movie looks wonderful.

It doesn't try too hard for irony or style; the comic-book sensibility remains pure, square, and happily stupid.

Of course it's loaded with CGI. It goes without saying it's preposterous. But it has the texture and takes the care to be a full-blown film.

It's paced and designed for people who won't shrivel up and die if two or three characters take 45 seconds between combat sequences to have a conversation about world domination, or a dame.

Joe Johnston -- returning to the vibe of his first directorial effort, The Rocketeer (1991) -- creates a fun retro-futurist environment with a World War II setting, and he has the discernment not to let the effects overwhelm the story.

From its antagonists to its art direction, everything about Johnston's movie has a been-there, seen-that familiarity. Yet Evans' clean-cut idealism and objectives make old-fashioned patriotism look fresh.

Here's what's missing: tension, drama, and most of all, a sense of wonder. This is a superhero movie, isn't it?

With its mix of World War II nostalgia, Bam-Pow comic book sensibilities, underdog determination and red-white-and-blue battle scenes, Captain America: The First Avenger is the best Marvel superhero flick since the first Iron Man.

Red, white and bland.

"Captain America" smashingly layers superhero stuff such as magic serums atop a wry appreciation for campy WWII propaganda and '60s cinematic rousers that kept Richard Burton, Robert Shaw and Lee Marvin constantly employed.

Johnston has delivered a light, clever and deftly balanced adventure picture with real lump in the throat nostalgia, with Nazis -- who make the best villains, and with loving references to Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The small things -- from the leading man to '40s flourishes -- are what make the movie work. If only Johnston had sweated the big stuff as well.