Movie Review: Captain America: the First Avenger

When a slight but smart man joins the Army during the Second World War, he has an unexpected opportunity; to become a super hero and a symbol for the best of American ideals. Besides the outstanding comical streak that runs throughout, Captain America: The First Avenger is a disappointing collection of overused, obviously computer-generated effects, a plot void of substance, and half hearted attempts at emotional depth that cannot put a dent in even the weakest emotional armor.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) wants to join the fight to kill Nazis, but he is small, weak, and ill. Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) sees something exceptional in him and takes him under his wing in a special division in the Army overseen by Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones). Steve Rogers was selected to go through a procedure that made him stronger and amplified all of his personal traits, a super-duper-symbol of American spirit; Captain America. Meanwhile, the sinister Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) traverses Europe to find ancient artifacts and harness their power. Colonel Phillips and Steve Rogers cannot allow this to occur.

In the opening scenes of Captain America: The First Avenger something about the way that Chris Evans looked was disturbing me and it took me a while to pinpoint it. Evan's proportions were all wrong. The ratio of shoulder and width of arm were wrong. He seemed unnaturally squatty. He seemed too real to be fake, yet too fake to be real. These types of subtle problems ring the bells my mind, warning me that something is wrong. It takes so much energy to figure it out, and is so distracting, that it was impossible for me to focus on the movie. When the bells start ringing, it is impossible to suspend disbelief.

Disappointingly, the bell choir did not stop chiming through the entire movie. So much of the movie is shot on a green screen and the backgrounds are just off-kilter enough to be noticeable, but not off- kilter enough to seem intentional. One minute the lighting is whimsical and fuzzy. The next scene the light is straight forward, no gloss, no sunshine. Instead of being able to be in the movie, experiencing it, I was trying to figure out if this was supposed to be historical, fantastical, or a fantastical-historical-science fiction movie.

Director Joe Johnson never met a montage he did not love. Given the sheer number of them, I think Johnson may love the montage so much that they reproduced like a compound full of fundamentalist polygamists. Johnson is lonely in the beginning, no montages to hold onto. Then comes along the first montage and 9 minutes later, there is another and later another.

The montages are a substitution for plot in Captain America: The First Avenger. Instead of taking the time to make us care about the characters, to develop them beyond what they are doing, their actions are slap dashed together in a semi-attention grabbing scenes. Besides a soap opera summary of some of the characters' backgrounds, they offer us only morsels of reasons to care about them. Worse, they barely do anything in the film. There is so much filler, so many fragmented scenes, that it is impossible to feel anything.

The only thing that consistently runs through the film is an outstanding sense of humor. It has been a long time since I have seen a movie that takes such advantage of comical opportunities as did Captain America: The First Avenger. There is a scene with a child that is so funny it actually earned two separate sets of laughter from me: The first time when I saw it, and the second time a couple seconds later when I replayed it in my head. That may have been the best laugh of the movie but it was not an isolated incident as the laughter came easily and often.

Captain America: The First Avenger was a hilarious, hot mess. The humor is not enough to justify seeing Captain America: The First Avenger in the theater but I might not change the channel if it was on while I was doing dishes.