Captain America: The First Avenger

The time for the Super Hero movies is now. There are those episodes in history where for a few years you get bombarded with movies of the same ilk. In the 80's it was the cheesy sci-fi/fantasy flicks with Conan the Barbarian and its like leading the pack. In the 70's and early 80's it was the gritty crime drama with Dirty Harry leading that race. For now we have the comic/super hero movies to deal with. Not saying any of this is bad in any way. I myself loved the campy fantasy pics of the 80's, and who doesn't love a good Dirty Harry one liner movie.

    Captain America lives up to the genre that its in. It is a movie filled with lots of action and does continually move in a generally forward direction. To those of you who are fans of the Marvel Adventures, one of the good things is they did not venture far from the storyline in this one. The main focus of the movie actually was on Captain America amazingly. Usually in a movie like this the character development is lacking but we see a lot of that with the Cap. Sadly there isn't much room left for the other characters which could make for a great side story. The movie stayed true though and pretty much left all of the other characters on the back burner. This is probably a good thing. Why develop characters that will never be in another movie?
      The acting was decent. Tommy Lee Jones plays a great General, Matrix bad dude Hugo Weaving does a great job as the Red Skull, and Chris Evans (even though has played other Marvel Super Heros sic. Human Torch) was a good fit for Captain America. Besides the token female role in the movie, there really isn't much room for any other acting, but its Captain America, you don't watch a movie like this to see acting. You watch Captain America to see a man throw a sweet looking shield and have it boomerang back to him.
      There is violence and explosions so some of the young children might not enjoy this much but overall its an action flick that makes its way into the Summer Blockbuster Extravaganza. My only let down of sorts and not major just minor annoyance was the ending "boss battle" was kind of lackluster. It seems shows are starting to lose their creative edge when trying to figure out how to off the bad guy in a grandiose type of manner. It was a fun movie, fast paced and hardly a dull moment. Watch with your children 8 and up, especially the boys, and both parents and children will be entertained.