Good, But Not Great.

Rating: 7/10 (15 June 2012)

There seems to be a lot of hype about this movie, so I went with a friend when it first came out. Sure, it packed theaters, but after seeing it two additional times with two other friends, I come to the conclusion that it's just an "okay" movie.
I understand a lot of people are going to say, "Oh you're stupid this movie is great!" but at least hear me out.
Let's get started with the special effects. Hands down some of the best I've ever seen in film. Giant aliens ripping apart buildings was pure awesome. However, I saw this movie only ONCE in 3D. Why only 1/3 in 3D? Because the 3D was godawful. It gave me a headache, and being as it was done post-processing, it didn't look convincing, not that 3D ever really does.
Where the movie falls short is the random times of corny, clichéd dialog, and just downright bad acting at some points. Cobie Smulders, as much as I love her in How I Met Your Mother, was terrible. Her lines sounded scripted, and she simply existed to try to add a more surreal element to the film. Basically over-emphasizing how dangerous things were.
The movie was far too long in my opinion. I noticed kids in the theater starting to get fussy toward the middle of the movie because of how long it takes to setup the plot. A lot of people were confused as to how the Tesseract really worked and how it played a substantial part of the plot. Too much terminology for people to remember, to be quite honest. They should have skipped more scientific discussion in place of better character development.
There really was little character development. Yes, the team fought, then they made up, then they fought again, only to come back and win. That's as far as the character development goes. If you watched ALL of the Marvel movies, the first hour is rather pointless simply because all it does is establish the background of the characters.
The action scenes occurred right toward the last 40 minutes, and were well directed. You felt at true sense of teamwork. The biggest problem was, no character except for Ironman was in any "real" danger. The characters felt like they were just non-stop combat machines and you never really feel a "on the edge of your seat" moment except for when Stark disposes of the nuke.
The balance of drama and comic relief is nearly PERFECT. Tony Stark of course was the majority of the comedy.
All in all, the movie was fun to watch, but I certainly wouldn't say it's a cinematic masterpiece. While the special effects and great cast of characters bring this movie to life, it suffers with a dull plot that can leave you dozing off at a few points.