Serviceable comic book fare, Captain America: The First Avenger tells a simple story which is better executed than its predecessor Avenger movie, Thor. It’s not as jingoistic as you might expect, given the name. The hook is that Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) was selected to become a superhero not because he knows how to beat up the bad guys, but precisely because he isn’t a bully and doesn’t want to kill anybody, even if they are Nazis.
I spent most of this film’s running time worrying about the Bluetooth headset that I’d misplaced somewhere … to summarize the plot, Jack (Sean Penn) wakes up, walks to work, travels up an elevator, has some meetings at the office, rides back down the elevator, and walks back home as the sun starts setting. During the day, he reminisces about growing up in 1950s suburban Texas. The good parts are random scenes evoking childhood feelings, and a pretty cool but irrelevant CGI sequence showcasing the birth of the universe and of life on Earth. But nothing really hangs together
Woody Allen still churns them out, this time a rom com souffle located in Paris, with a garnish of 1920s nostalgia. Owen Wilson is actually not bad as a put-upon writer, and Marion Cotillard is the luminous love interest. Add some jokes for the Hemingway/ Picasso/ Dali/ Fitzgerald crowd, and Allen’s fashioned a movie that would appeal to lovers of last year’s similarly light and fluffy The King’s Speech.
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