It's sort of entertaining, but dramatically uninteresting and shallow.

Rating: 6/10 (16 July 2012)

These Marvel comics obviously have a lot of fans, and apparently whatever it was that fans (and many non-fans) were looking for in a Marvel film was fulfilled here, explaining the huge internet buzz, the vast amounts of money this has made, and it's current spot in the top 50 films of all time on the Internet Movie Database. This movie does have expensive looking action, and some comedic bits with lots of superheroes, but what it's missing is...pretty much everything else. The plot is uninteresting and quite honestly stupid, and nothing really is driving this story along. At times, to me, it grew boring, because there was nothing to get excited about besides action, big stars and comedy.
After Norse god Loki steals the powerful potential super weapon "Tesseract" from the peace keeping S.H.I.E.L.D. agency, and mind controls a few people, Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) puts together a team of superheroes known as the Avengers, made up of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and eventually Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). Loki is in cahoots with a group of aliens called the Chitauri, and plans to help them take over Earth. The Avengers must stop fighting with each other in order to protect the Earth...can they do it, or will the Earth be destroyed? (Take a guess).
Director Joss Wheddon, known for his work on television series, does a fine job with the direction when it comes to action. The big action scenes are appropriately frenetic, and they look big and shiny. I appreciated that the action scenes were spaced apart from each other also, as to not overkill the action like the Transformers films. The fighting scenes between the Avengers was a bit overkill however. Half the movie is them disagreeing with each other, or Tony Stark being snarky with everyone. These scenes don't really have anything to them either. They aren't exciting. They are meant to be funny, but oftentimes comes off as more infantile in the humor department than anything else. They further the plot along, only in that the plot cannot proceed until these guys stop fighting. These scenes are supposed to work as character development, but it's almost unbelievable how stupid these guys are, and how unwilling they are to put their differences aside.
The middle of the movie takes place on a ship, with the Avengers angry at each other, and this whole section of the movie just meanders. You could say that this part of the movie gives us the character conflicts and whatnot, which it does, but the Avengers' dislike of each other could have been introduced in something more important to the plot, instead of practically stopping the plot to have these guys get angry at each other. And that's really the movie's biggest problem is the plot. There's never really a feeling of dread, or that something bad could happen, and it's hard to care about anything that's happening. That's not to say watching Tony Stark bantering isn't amusing, or watching Bruce Banner go insane as the Hulk isn't interesting, but nothing ever truly feels at stake. When the film decides to kill off a character to add some level of emotion, and serve as a reason for these heroes to stop their childishness, it doesn't work on an emotional level. It comes off as a cheap way to further along the plot.
The Avengers has some good elements to it. It's got a lot of charisma in the cast, and each character is given enough screen time I suppose. The action scenes are satisfying mostly, and some of the comedy isn't bad (while some does come off as a bit corny and pandering to the audience). The problem is the plot, where the villains never really come off as menacing, despite possessing a super weapon, and a main villain is Loki who is about as threatening as a teddy bear. There's nothing to the film, and nothing to really love about it, unless you are a big fan of these actors, the comics, or explosions. There's very little below the surface of the film, and without a good plot to move this along, we've essentially got one long Avengers origin story. Apparently many have fallen in love with this though, so if you like your movies big, dumb and full of buff dudes, you'll probably like this one quite a bit.
My rating: ** 1/2 out of ****. 140 mins. PG-13 for action violence.