Lukewarm

Rating: 5/10 (21 February 2018)

Not bad, but not good: lukewarm.
The storyline is relatively faithful to the Black Panther's origins story (mutatis mutandis), so one is not disappointed there, although in some moments the movie looks like a (bad) combination between Coming to America (1988) and The Lion King (1994).
Some of the actors overact. This may be due to two things: too much green screen in the back and a poor strategy concerning the languages spoken by the characters throughout the movie. If possible, they could have invested more in the use of original african languages; the african/english accent doesn't work that well. Also, there's just too much CGI. With so much money, they could (should?) have invested in a trip to Africa to film on location, instead of just going to South Korea.
Character development was somewhat forgotten. Characters are not that deep and are actually kind of accidental sometimes.
A word on fight coreographies. Should have been much better! When first appearing on Captain America: Civil War, Blach Panther proved to be a skilled fighter, with a kind of unique fighting style, rivalizing with Captain America himself and the Winter Soldier. Now, in this movie, however, he looks very ordinary, devoid of the one on one martial skills he displayed before.
Despite all this, I have to say two more things. One, the soundtrack is very good! All of it. Two, the depiction of Wakanda and the general african ambience, namely concerning some traditions and cultural aspects (real and/or fictional) deserve praise.
Bottom line: entertaining, not a total flop, but still not good enough. They didn't exaggerate on the jokes (although they were funny), fortunately, which is a point in favor - the movie wasn't a joke, contrary to some tendencies that have been going around lately (e.g. Guardians vol. 2, Thor Ragnarok); but there was some bad writing and some bad directing, I have to say.