Movies: Comix characters: Captain America arrives at your local theatre.

NewYorkTimes (July21,2k11)

Captain America: The First Avenger, a new movie based on Stan Lee's comicbook character was fulsomely praised by most film critics, with at least one notable exception, A. O. Scott, of NYT — and even he came around in the course of his critique to tell us it's "great fun," all caveats aside.   Posts of intro materials are mine.  I recommend you read the whole review.

— Movie Man

MOVIE REVIEW

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Hey, Brooklyn, 

Where’d You Get Those Muscles?

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: July 21, 2011

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“Captain America: The First Avenger” turns out in the end — and this is really the opposite of a spoiler — to have been a two-hour teaser for another movie. That picture, foreshadowed in the second “Hulk,” the first “Thor” and both “Iron Man” episodes and scheduled to open next May, will be called “The Avengers.” Whether you regard its imminence with resignation, dread or uncontainable glee depends on your standing in the Marvel Universe. Shareholders and die-hard fans no doubt already have the opening date circled on their calendars, and many of the rest of us will probably show up as well, either out of curiosity or solemn duty.

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Jay Maidment/Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment

Chris Evans in "Captain America: The First Avenger." More Photos »

Multimedia

Slide Show

The Films of Chris Evans

Related

• Star-Spangled and Searching His Own Psyche (July 10, 2011)

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Jay Maidment/Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment

Chris Evans with Hayley Atwell in the film directed by Joe Johnston. More Photos »

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Jay Maidment/Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment

Chris Evans as the superhero Captain America. More Photos »

But in the meantime this origin story, directed by Joe Johnston and starring Chris Evans as the square-jawed, shield-throwing, red-white-and-blue Captain, is pretty good fun. The succinct judgment of my 15-year-old screening buddy was “Better than ‘Thor’ or ‘Green Lantern,’ ” and while that isn’t saying a lot, it may be saying enough. “Captain America,” based on a character that first appeared in Timely Comics, a precursor to Marvel, in the early 1940s — the era of Batman, Superman and other old-growth, popular-front superheroes — has a winningly pulpy, jaunty, earnest spirit.

With a dusty color scheme that evokes newsprint and cheap ink, and a production design that captures the Deco-inflected futurism of an earlier time, the movie is nostalgic without making a big fuss about it. And though there are plenty of the usual digital enhancements and overscaled effects, the pseudo-operatic grandiosity that has become a staple of the genre is mostly missing. Instead “Captain America,” like its unapologetically corny hero, is propelled by unpretentious and plucky ingenuity.