Okay, but hits an unhappy medium between cheesiness with taking itself semi-seriously

Rating: 6/10 (3 September 2015)

I watched this movie expecting it to be really great, as I'd heard tons of good things about it and I love the concept of Captain America as a character - a guy who captures feelings of patriotism, do-goodery, and somewhat old-fashioned ideals, and is relatively underpowered but still impressive, with a unique gimmick in his shield. Suffice it to say I was disappointed. It's far from being horrible or anything, Cap was certainly fun to watch at times, and I still like the basic concept. But overall it just didn't quite work for me.
I'll confess, it's been a while since I watched it, so I don't remember a ton of specifics. But what I do remember is that overall, it seemed like it was trying to take itself at least mildly seriously, when in reality it felt quite cheesy and fake, without a hint of genuineness or true depth. I know asking for realism from superheroes can be stupid, and sometimes it's better to not even try and instead go a relatively cheesy route, but if you're going to do that, you have to actually EMBRACE it. This movie doesn't do that. I mean, it incorporates some humor, but overall it has the feel of generally "playing it straight", but not the movie to back it up.
When it came to feeling a realistic sense of tension, I feel this movie fails. Like others have mentioned, Captain America comes across as invincible, despite the fact that his powers only consist of normal human attributes heightened to their absolute maximum capacity, but not actually pushed beyond that. You can complain about Superman, but at least his "overpoweredness" is internally consistent within the rules of the character himself. If someone existed with his powers, of course they'd be extremely powerful and successful. With Cap it doesn't make sense. This lack of tension was made much worse, though, when the normal soldiers were involved, as it felt like it was making real people's sacrifices into something rather cheesy. I'm not sure if it would be going too far to call it mildly disrespectful, but at best it didn't make sense. The overall pacing to keep up the tension was also pretty bad.
I also remember the villain didn't really work for me either, probably thanks to the really cheesy mask and the overwrought Nazi- who-rebelled-against-the-other-Nazis premise. Why can't Cap just fight the regular Nazi group? Certainly Red Skull could just be working with and for the rest of the Nazis. Wouldn't that be more fitting and appealing? Having the character essentially be working against the rest of the Nazis puts the viewer in an awkward position, as we tend to see the Nazis as the "ultimate" bad guys, especially since they were actually REAL. It doesn't work as well for a movie with this premise and feels "wrong" to me.
I think my overall problem with the movie was that it was in a realistic setting and seemed to want you to take it to be something relatively non-cheesy, but it failed in doing so. They even had an in-universe "parody" of sorts of the fanciful aspects of Cap by making Captain America start out as a character and a symbol rather than actually saving the day, and having him perform in front of people and comic books be made out of him. This seems to set up the movie itself as something different from those "juvenile" interpretations. And yet, it probably would've been a better movie if it hadn't tried to be realistic at all and instead been a goofy tribute to simpler times all the way through. Either that, or it could've been a "deconstruction-reconstruction" sort of deal, e.g. showing how life isn't all that simple and victory doesn't come so easy, but we need that purity, idealism and optimism embedded in the seemingly simplistic, or something along those lines. But it was neither, and ended up in a place where I can't really take it seriously but I can't just relish the over-the-top fun either.
To be clear, I'm not saying this movie was terrible or anything. It was competently put together overall. It had enjoyable moments and some things were well-done. I'm just trying to express why, for me, it didn't "click".
One last note: I won't spoil it, but the ending of the movie was really abrupt and not connected with the prior movie as much as it was setting up for a sequel, and really wasn't very good at all. But even worse than that ending is what comes afterward, which is almost literally an advertisement for The Avengers, except it's actually technically a part of the movie. That was the worst part of the entire movie for me. I absolutely hated it. Obviously, movie-makers want to make money, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't want to be slapped in the face with, "Heyyyy, go check out this other movie we're making!!" It takes me out of the movie itself and reminds me that this experience, this story, is a product made to be sold. It just comes across as shameless. It's the exact same sort of problem as excessive product placement, except worse because it's actually a short scene to itself, not something unobtrusively (or hopefully unobtrusively) sneaked in.