Is too many good guys a thing?

Rating: 5/10 (1 December 2014)

In a late scene Hulk beats the daylight out of the one credible super-villain in the film - Loki - and you realize having a team of superheroes - even one that spends a lot of time bickering - does tend to unbalance the scales of justice to the home team. The superheroes also include an indestructible beast - the aforementioned Hulk - and an immortal god - Thor. Like the old Jerry Seinfeld line about Superman - "why would he needs the rest of the Superfriends - he's Superman!" Why do you need, for example, Hawkeye - essentially Katniss Everdeen with piercing blue eyes - or Black Widow whose superpower seems to be looking good in leather? This leaves Robert Downey, Jr.'s Ironman who, by contractual arrangement with the $25M a picture actor gets all the good lines. Two in particular, when he calls out an extra for playing Galaga and refers to Thor as "Point Break" are instant film classics. Unfortunately, Whedon, like the rest of us, is slave to RDJ's ego so he's left to give just dull exposition dialog to the boring and largely obsolete Captain America ("there's only one God and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that") and one-note Samuel L. Jackson ("hey you guys, we need to fight back!"). Having said all that, although a little talky, the film presents expensive-looking prolonged and noisy CGI action sequences which distract, if not entertain. The movie understands its nerdy male audience by lingering on the backsides of the female characters whenever they exit the shot for a meaningful but not creepy length of time (Gweneth Paltrow runs with this trope by only achieving ambulatory movement by strutting at all times). An excellent cast (actor's fees only must have hit the $100M mark) also contributes to a worthwhile outing. In short, this confused story of overwhelming good versus one overcompensating pasty evil younger brother with bad hair staring at for its 2 1/2 hour run time.