Very entertaining, but not great

Rating: 8/10 (28 April 2012)

I have liked the comics from an early age, but it wasn't until I was 10 or 11 years old when I started to systematically collect them, following specific titles and "plunging" myself into the respective mythologies from Marvel and DC (I have never been never been an "exclusive" fan of some publisher). One of the first comics I took seriously was The Avengers, because Stan Lee already knew that the secret to capture the readers wasn't on the cosmic battles and colorful disguises, but on the examination of the vulnerable and human side of the characters. The Avengers was the perfect medium for that, because it put together a group of superheroes with very different ideologies and personalities, so that their mere interaction was as entertaining as their fights against villains and other threatens. Fortunately, director and screenwriter Joss Whedon comprehended that fact, and as a result, the film The Avengers is very entertaining.
In The Avengers, Whedon wrote a generally well balanced screenplay in which he re-introduced the characters, justified their alliance and put them to fight as a team in one of those cosmic threatens suffered by New York with such a frequency. I said "generally well balanced" because the screenplay makes some stumbles and has a few weakly developed characters. To start with, Loki feels like a bland villain; his methods and his motivation aren't consistent to what we had seen in the comics, in which he was a formidable and malicious manipulator (after all, he's the archetypal "trickster"). I also found the "Heli-carrier" sequence, in which Iron Man and Captain America try to repair an engine during 15 minutes, a bit weak...it feels like a poor excuse to insert an apparatus action sequence. And the other problem from the screenplay is that we don't know practically anything about the character Clint Barton. Fortunately, it was interpreted by Jeremy Renner, who is such a good actor that he can display his character's nature and his relationship with the other members of the team with just one expression; but even like that, I would have preferred the sacrifice of some gratuitous action scene in order to bring that character more dimension.
Those fails are mainly noticed during the first half of The Avengers, in which the pieces of the story are being accommodated. For the rest, this is a very satisfactory and entertaining (and unexpectedly quite funny) culmination of the "cinematic universe" Marvel had been building since the film Iron Man in 2008, and it was very pleasant to finally see the seeds which had been planted in that film harvested. As for the actors, I don't have any complaints. When I wrote the review of Captain America: The First Avenger, I complained about the fact that Chris Evans hadn't been able to evoke the gravity of Captain America, but fortunately, he corrected that weakness in The Avengers. Chris Hemsworth also brings a perfect work as Thor. Robert Downey Jr. shows a lot of enthusiasm and conviction as Tony Stark/Iron Man, while Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk also bring solid performances.
In my opinion, the best moments from The Avengers were the dramatic ones, as well as the interaction between the superheroes. However, that doesn't avoid the action scenes from being exciting. Their best attribute is that they are always perfectly clear. In conclusion, even though I wouldn't consider it an excellent film, I had a very good time while watching The Avengers, and that is already more than enough to make it worthy of a recommendation.