Captain America: The First Avenger Reviews
Top CriticIt doesn't try too hard for irony or style; the comic-book sensibility remains pure, square, and happily stupid.
Comic book fans are likely to appreciate Captain America, which does a good job of consolidating the disparate origin aspects of the character into something easily digestible.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Kudos, then, to the creators of Captain America's big-screen blockbuster for keeping the action rooted in the past; except for some brief present-day bookends.
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| Original Score: 3/5
The only problem is that we've been there -- been nearly everywhere Captain America goes -- in countless previous movies.
Director Joe Johnston has fun with the myth of Captain America.
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| Original Score: 2.0/5
What lingers most about Captain America is its innocent, throwback ethos, a firm, unqualified embrace of the Little Guy.
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.
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| Original Score: B
Scrawny Steve is such a guileless and likeable little dude that his sweetness endures long past the super-sizing.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely... whip up a Captain America story that often feels like its only purpose is to deliver Steve Rogers into the 21st century.
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| Original Score: 2/4
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.
Despite all the advance hype preceding its release, Captain America, yet another 3-D Marvel Comics concoction, straggles onto the screen with little reason to exist except as a marketing machine.
A forced love angle and vapid dialogue dooms Captain America.
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| Original Score: C-
"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.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Rather than fight against the character's flag-waving, Nazi-busting roots, the movie embraces them, going back to the early '40s to remind us what made the "greatest generation" so great.
Captain America: The First Avenger is pretty good, insofar as it's not nearly as terrible as it seemed destined to be.
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| Original Score: B-
Captain America's metabolism, Peggy tells him, burns energy four times faster than the average person's. The movie's metabolism burns out.
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.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Captain America isn't a masterpiece, but it's a solidly crafted, elegant adventure movie that held my attention from start to finish and sent me out into the street energized instead of enervated.
Almost half of the film's running time elapses before Rogers gets any kind of power at all, and though its elements are awfully familiar, it's the most involving part of the film because it takes advantage of Evans' performance.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
Here's what's missing: tension, drama, and most of all, a sense of wonder. This is a superhero movie, isn't it?
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Evans brings just the right amount of confidence and aw-shucks modesty to Rogers, who surely counts as the most appealing Marvel hero.
By finding an ingenious way to streamline a now-familiar genre, Captain America: The First Avenger does his country proud.
A star-spangled superhero from the Norman Rockwell era, Captain America might seem ill-prepared to do battle at the modern box-office... But never underestimate the power of old-fashioned corn.
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| Original Score: 3/4
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Evans, who played the Human Torch in two less-than-fantastic Fantastic Four films, brings such humor, heart and vigor to virtuous Steve that our rooting interest holds even when the action gets to be standard-issue.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Need a top-notch comic-book movie to stop this summer's march of mediocre superheroes? "Captain America: The First Avenger," reporting for duty.
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| Original Score: 4/5
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.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
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.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The mix of WWII style and flashy modern eye candy is no surprise coming from director Joe Johnston.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Evans - always a reliably dynamic and vivacious screen presence - can't do much to bring the character to life. As far as superheroes go, Cap remains a bit of a stiff.
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| Original Score: 2/4
"Captain America" is exactly what the third week of July needed: a curiously fun, surprisingly imaginative and unashamedly old-fashioned yarn of skulduggery and adventure.
The details in Captain America deliver, but the big moments fall flat - you can tell that we're intended to cheer here, to weep there, but the scenes that try hardest to elicit emotions just feel deflated.
You are not in for a giddy, winking, high-flying summer fling. And that's OK -- there's something appealing about such an old-fashioned approach.
The picture is nothing, really, that you haven't seen before, but it's the definition of a square, competent, deliver-the-goods blockbuster.
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| Original Score: B
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.
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| Original Score: 4/5
In terms of even recent films, Captain America lacks the deft touch, appealing character interaction and sophisticated storytelling skills of Marvel Comics' X-Men: First Class.
[A] hokey, hacky, two-hour-plus exercise in franchise transition/price gouging, complete with utterly unnecessary post-converted 3-D.
