Captain America: The First Avenger

What a difference a couple of decades makes!  When I was growing up in the 80s, the concept of a super-hero movie just didn't make sense to me; I actually refused to see Tim Burton's Batman in the theater because the only Batman I knew was Adam West, and I didn't want to see that on the big screen --- of course, that was long before I discovered the joys of shark repellant.  The 90s didn't help matters much, with Batman and Robin, the Dolph Lungren Punisher, and all the douchebags in my age group that dressed up as The Crow every damn year for Halloween.  Perhaps the least impressive super-hero movie of the time was the never-released-in-American-theaters and filmed-in-Yugoslavia Captain America.

Two words: rubber ears.

So, when it was announced that Captain America would get another chance at a movie as Marvel Studios builds up to The Avengers in 2012, I was a little nervous.  Sure, I liked the last few Marvel Studios movies --- Iron Man 2, Thor, and X-Men: First Class --- but a patriotically-themed super-hero movie could easily get hokey.  Oh, and I wasn't too impressed with director Joe Johnston's last movie, either.  Can Captain America: The First Avenger beat the odds and be yet another fun and successful comic book movie in the summer of 2011?

World War II is in full swing, and every able-bodied American man is joining the armed forces.  Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is not able-bodied --- he's been deemed 4F and is the personification of the old Charles Atlas ads --- but he keeps reapplying for the Army in the hopes that he will allowed to squeak through and risk his life, like all the other men.  After all, if every man he knows, including his buddy Bucky (Sebastian Stan), has the right to go to war, why can't he?  This perseverance catches the attention of Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who selects Rogers for an experiment.  He is allowed to train with some elite soldiers for the right to receive a highly experimental treatment and (possibly) become a new breed of soldier.  Through his positive attitude, bravery, intelligence, and perseverance, Steve Rogers was selected for the experiment, which took a man that looked like this:

...and turned him into a heaping bowl of hunk:

Judging from that scientist's gaze, Rogers grew more than muscles.

While the experiment was a success, Erskine was assassinated by a sneaky Nazi, taking his secret super-soldier formula to the grave.  I wouldn't have thought that a government-funded program would allow one person to keep all the secrets exclusively in his noggin, but origin stories are funny like that, sometimes.  Seeing that he is the only result from a very expensive military program, Rogers is not allowed to fight in the war; instead, he is forced to put on a gaudy costume and promote war bonds as Captain America. 

Captain America: sellout

That can only last so long, of course, since there is a war going on and there are bad guys to fight.  And I'm not talking about your average, run-of-the-mill evil Nazis, either; the bad guys in this movie want to destroy everything and create a new world order.

Is this the future?

Obviously, that can't be allowed to happen.  Despite the strength of the Allied Forces, it is ultimately up to Captain America and his new Army buddies to save the world from destruction at the hands of the nefarious Red Skull (Hugo Weaving).  Why only them?  Apparently, saving the world is a lower priority than you might think.

A lot of people were skeptical when Chris Evans was cast in the iconic (and fairly humorless) lead role of Captain America.  Since nobody has ever seen Sunshine, where he has a dramatic role, the fear was that Evans would be his goofy, sarcastic self, a la Ryan Reynolds.  I am happy to say that Evans did a good job in the lead role.  He was brave, earnest, and loyal; he basically took all the heroic parts in a war movie and rolled them up into one character.  Hugo Weaving was suitably dastardly as Red Skull; I don't know if I would say that he out-eviled the Nazis in this movie, but he came close.  His character's grand scheme didn't make a ton of sense to me, but everyone agreed that he was insane, so I'll let that slide.  I wasn't the biggest fan of his red-faced makeup --- I would have gone for a bumpier, burn victim look --- but I thought they did a good job with the makeup that implied that his Hugo Weaving face was a mask.

Odd...why didn't Weaving have a romantic interest?

The rest of the supporting cast was fine, but those two set the standard.  Hayley Atwell was pretty good as Roger's rough-and-tumble love interest, Peggy Carter, and she was happily never a damsel in distress.  Tommy Lee Jones was very good as the tired, crotchety colonel in charge of the super soldier experiment.  I was surprisingly moved by a look he gave of utter despair toward the end of the film; maybe that's just his sad face, but you rarely see tough guy actors look that vulnerable.  Stanley Tucci did a good job making the selection of Rogers seem rational, which was a bigger hurdle than you might think.  Sebastian Stan was okay as Rogers' buddy, but I thought Dominic Cooper was surprisingly likable as genius industrialist Howard Stark.  There are some other recognizable actors in the movie --- Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, and a few others --- but they played relatively small and generic parts, with the exception of Jones (an evil scientist) and Jackson (reprising his Nick Fury role).

Director Joe Johnston has a tendency of making movies set in the past, oftentimes romanticizing the idea of heroism, which actually makes him a pretty good fit for this film.  The goal of this movie was to make Captain America look cool and give him a grand enough task to make him a legend in this prequel to theMarvel super-hero movies that are set in modern times.

Hmm...that's a good start, but too subtle.

Johnston keeps a good pace throughout the film, wisely choosing to focus on pre-transformation Steve and a few choice, defining battles for Captain America, instead of bogging him down in a number of lesser battles.  I like a lot of choices he made here, especially the chaste romance between Cap and Peggy.

...although, the chaste bit might have been her doing.

Heroes that are squeaky-clean boy scouts can be tough to sympathize with or care about, because they're not terribly realistic.  Johnston chose to portray Captain America as less of a do-gooding patriot, instead focusing a lot of time and effort on Steve Rogers hating bullies.  I thought this movie handled all the typical war scenes well and had several moving this-is-a-war-movie-and-men-don't-cry-but-seriously-OMG-I'm-tearing-up-here moments.  I am generally a sucker for moments like those, but this movie was surprisingly good at them.

As much as I liked a lot of this movie, I had some small complaints.  First of all, this movie has a metric ton of CGI, especially with pre-transformation Steve Rogers.  While I think this was done pretty well, there were some moments where the head of Chris Evans didn't seem to fit the body, or where his height seemed inconsistent.  Not a huge deal, and it was impressive overall, but I still noticed it.  I also wasn't a huge fan of his costume.  It looked better than the 1990 movie version did, but I preferred this getup:

I realize that a super-hero with an established colorful costume needs to wear it at some point, but I just thought the blend of costume and practical clothing was a cool visual.  Perhaps my biggest gripe with Captain America: The First Avenger was its use of minor players.  This movie is filled to the brim with characters that are clearly meant to reference important characters in the comic character's history.  Unfortunately, since they are so many and time is so limited, these characters wind up being largely charmless.  Even Bucky, who plays an important role in the development of our hero, is not particularly likable.  They weren't bad actors or characters, they just never felt important.

But those are minor complaints.  This movie is filled with action that, while not terribly plausible, is very entertaining.  This film had heart and character, and it made Captain America look cool while fighting with a shield.  Oh, and the teaser trailer for The Avengers after the credits was a geeky thrill.

While I was researching pictures for this post, I stumbled across a brilliant blog, titled Hitler Getting Punched.  I like when a title explains everything I need to know about a website.  Check it out.

I also happened across this officially commissioned painted poster that was given to the cast and crew of the movie:

 I love retro movie posters.  The artist maintains his own blog about his comic art, called The Self-Absorbing Man.  Pretty cool stuff.

Hot Tub Time Machine

I guess the big question with Hot Tub Time Machine is why anyone would ever need a review to tell them about this movie.  If the title doesn't explain it all to you, then what can I do to help?  It's a stupid title for a movie that has no intentions of being anything more or less than a stupid comedy.  To be completely honest, the gloriously stupid title (the best since Snakes On a Plane) would have been enough to convince me to watch this movie.  Adding in John Cusack and Craig Robinson is just icing on the cake.

The premise is that three one-time best friends are now eking out sad existences.  Adam's (Cusack) girlfriend has just moved out and apparently taken most of his belongings.  The only person he sees regularly is his nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), who spends all his time in his basement room playing video games.  Nick (Robinson) is married to a controlling wife (who insisted he hyphenate his last named when they got married) and his job includes cleaning the feces out of rich people's dogs.  They are brought together when Lou (Rob Corddry), an alcoholic party animal, makes the mistake of revving his engine in time to Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" with the garage door closed.  Someone (who could this possibly be?  It's late at night, he lives alone, and the garage is closed!) saves his life and the hospital assumes that this was a failed suicide attempt.  Since Lou's family hates him and he has no real friends, his childhood buddies, Adam and Jacob, rally to his hospital bedside.  They don't talk to Lou any more because "he's an asshole," but they agree to take care of him because "he's [their] asshole."  If you don't have someone like that in your circle of friends, chances are, you're that guy.

Lou assures them that it was just an accident, but they decide that the best way to cheer up a hard-drinking forty year-old adolescent is to relive their youthful debauchery by visiting their old stomping grounds.  These stomping grounds happen to be a ski town that has all but been condemned; the town's stores are all out of business and their formerly hedonistic hotel is now filled with the elderly and their cats.  The group (which includes Jacob, for some reason) gets their old room, which comes with a broken hot tub.  The hotel repairman (Chevy Chase) fixes it so that glows with a yellow light that makes the water a suspicious shade of urine yellow, but the group strips down and gets hot tub drunk right away.

When they wake up, it is 1986.  The three friends now inhabit their eighteen year-old bodies and are at the bustling ski resort in the prime of their lives.  Jacob has also gone back in time, although no explanation is given as to how or why he is in his own modern day body.  The group is warned by the repairman not to change anything in the past, but that plan gets old fast.  Adam has the chance to avoid dumping the perfect girlfriend, Nick can redeem his musical dreams, Lou can drink a lot and try to get laid, and Jacob can try prevent his existence from being wiped out by the group changing the future.  There are a lot of 80s jokes, some gratuitous breasts, a few shots of Corddry's naked butt, and a lot of slapstick comedy.  Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it's all pretty stupid.

For being so obviously dumb, this movie had some pretty solid direction.  Steve Pink is better known as a screenwriter (he wrote High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank), but he has a gift for catching humor with his camera.  Some of that is obviously due to him giving the cast some leeway with their lines, but I'll give Pink credit for making this ridiculous movie not come off as amateurish.

The main cast is pretty good, too.  John Cusack is always likable in his movies, even though he hasn't made a great one in a while.  Craig Robinson is rapidly becoming a reliable quality gauge for stupid comedies.  His deadpanning into the camera the phrase "hot tub time machine" is worth seeing the movie for, just by itself.  Clark Duke plays a chubby nerd this time, expanding on his varied film credits that include "chubby dork," "chubby dweeb," and the adjective-less "nerd."  What will make or break your enjoyment of this movie is how much you like Rob Corddry.  Most of the film's humor comes from him, including every single cheap or gross-out joke in the script.  Personally, I got tired of him pretty quickly, but he still made me laugh on occasion, which I found impressive.  Usually, when I am turned off by a comedic character, there is no way back into my good graces (I'm judgmental like that), but his timing was good and some of his lines are brilliant.  He's really, really obnoxious, though.

The supporting cast is surprisingly full decent performances.  Of course, Chevy Chase has fun as the nutty/supernatural repairman, so he's decent enough.  Crispin Glover gets some laughs as a bellboy doomed to lose his arm...somehow.  Thomas Lennon has a cameo that is a little funny, I guess, but nothing special.  The young cast was surprisingly decent, too.  Sebastian Stan overacted as the stereotypical 80s movie ski jerk, but this isn't a movie that requires subtlety, so it worked well.  Similarly, Lyndsy Fonseca and Collette Wolfe played their ditzy snow bunny slut roles as well as the roles demanded.  Lizzy Caplan did well as Cusack's "true" love interest, and they managed to give the movie something a little deeper than a stupid slapstick comedy deserves.

Are there any flaws in this film?  Well, yeah.  But to detail the film's scientific and logical flaws is missing the point.  You don't think a movie titled Hot Tub Time Machine really cares do you?  If this sounds like a stupid movie, you're absolutely right.  It's dumb and embraces that level of cleverness fully.  It's definitely better than the title implies, but a lot of the jokes generate chuckles instead of laughs.  Admittedly, a big part of that for me was because I didn't really have fun with Rob Corddry's character, even though he had some of the film's best lines.  This movie's biggest flaw was in giving the bulk of the humor to the least likable character.  Corddry carried this film's humor, even though there were several other actors capable of chipping in.  I thought Craig Robinson was underused, despite his theoretically main character status.  Chevy Chase, Thomas Lennon and Crispin Glover could have done more, too.  As far as stupid slapstick goes, there are certainly worse movies to watch, but this just isn't funny enough to satisfy me.