euphoria/dysphoria

It was OK.

The big problems:

1. The rigidity of talent within the cast. Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci were fabulous. I loved them. Chris Evans was alright at acting, but mostly pretty. The leading lady was acceptable. All other minor characters were background noise. The villain was just… well, we’ll talk about him later.

2. The special effects. While I was impressed by their ability to make Evans look like a scrawny dude for the first twenty minutes of the movie, the rest were lackluster. Battle scenes that had the potential to be epic were shoddy, at best. And they did one of my least favorite things ever: slow-motion in the middle of an action sequence (complete with bad CGI). JUST AGH. And maybe it’s better when you see it in 3D. But, lord almighty, I sincerely doubt it.

3. The villain. He was not scary, he was not fully developed, he had maybe a five-second backstory and the rest was him sometimes having a really bad German accent, but mostly not. The scary thing, I guess, was that he had a red face? Anyway, there wasn’t enough development or groundwork laid out to make him seem like a viable threat. And it didn’t help that his minions had the absolute stupidest salute thing ever that had me nearly busting a gut in the theater.

4. The middle. For maybe ten minutes, the plot takes the passenger seat while you’re driven headlong through mindless action sequences. They are poorly executed and, to be frank, serve no purpose aside from attempting to establish that Captain America is the BEST EVER and that he is GETTING SHIT DONE. This could have been accomplished in innumerable and far more effective ways. But instead we get poorly animated action scenes of vomit.
5. I just didn’t care. UH OH SPOILERS. When what’s-his-face died and Cap’n was being weepy I could’ve cared less. When the Cap’n was about to “die” and what’s-her-face was crying, I didn’t care. I had so little emotional investment in these characters. The only thing I found myself sad about was that Stanley Tucci died so early in the film and that Tommy Lee Jones wasn’t around more.
6. The opening. It pissed me off that they started with the frozen in the arctic-thing. That was simply poor story-telling, in my opinion. They could have built so much more suspense.

It wasn’t terrible. As Julie and I kept saying, “It wasn’t the Green Lantern.” It just didn’t have the OOMPH of “Iron Man.” I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they rushed this one so much to make the summer blockbuster. I mean, think about it, two marvel superhero films in one summer. Plus, working on this even more epic blockbuster… I don’t know. The other thing is that whereas “Iron Man” and “Thor” seemed like they were really stories for the character, “Captain America” seemed kind of like they were trying to hastily introduce this guy.

I honestly think that only every other Avengers series movie can be good. “Iron Man” was fantastic. “The Hulk” was crap. “Thor” was good. “Captain America” was OK. I am hoping that this means “The Avengers” will be amazing. And, if nothing else, after the credits you get the teaser trailer for it—and it was worth my ten dollars just to see RDJ and Chris Helmsworth in the same frame together.

ANYWAY: It had potential, but it didn’t deliver.