MOVIE REVIEWS: CAPTAIN AMERICA

Critics have been tough on the plethora of superheroes who have muscled into the megaplexes this year. But they seem to have a warm place in their heart for the latest one, Captain America. “I hope Captain America finds an audience,” Michael Phillips says in the Chicago Sun-Times, seemingly an odd critical comment. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times remarks that he felt a sense of “pleasure” when he realized “that hey, here is a real movie, not a noisy assembly of incomprehensible special effects.” Not that the effects aren’t special. Several critics agree that they most definitely are. “Like its unapologetically corny hero,” A.O. Scott writes in the New York Times, Captain America “is propelled by unpretentious and plucky ingenuity.” And Claudia Puig in USA Today provides a quote for the ads: “This is the kind of old-fashioned popcorn entertainment summer is made for.” Critics particularly praise the performance of Chris Evans in the title role for pulling it all off. Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News remarks that Evans strikes “the right balance between old-fashioned corniness and retro-style integrity.” Carie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer comments that Evans’s “clean-cut idealism and objectives make old fashioned patriotism look fresh.” And Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times observes that the “part brings out an appealing earnestness and humility in the actor that is certainly not business as usual in the comic book superhero genre.”