I liked it a lot.  I went with GRRM, Parris, Raya and Ty yesterday afternoon.  Our timing was perfect.  The crowds weren’t bad (Santa Fe isn’t much of a movie town), we had great seats, and anticipation was high.  I was going to get my fix of gorgeous men — my personal favorites, Captain America, and Loki.  I know, I know, Thor is gorgeous too, but I like more sensitive suffering types.  Or I guess in Loki’s case, bat shit crazy, but he’s got the kind of narrow features, and passion that I love.  Sort of the overbred race horse look, and I guess I still kind of think of Steve as the small, delicate man he was before the treatment.

Anyway, enough about the gorgeous guys.  This movie was just flat out fun and exciting.  Tony Stark got all the best lines, the Hulk got the two best moments of “business”, Nick Fury was appropriately manipulative, The Cap was true blue, and had a great moment when he finally gets a reference — to The Wizard of Oz.  I wouldn’t have minded if the movie had been longer so there was more time to show The Cap trying to get up to speed in this new world.  I wanted to know exactly how Thor heard his brother had gone off the rails again.  I didn’t need it, I just wanted it because I was enjoying the ride.

Hawkeye, or The Hawk as they called him in the film was cute, but sort of wasted, and Black Widow made me crazy.  I understand they needed a girl in this mix, especially a girl in a skin tight cat suit, but I was having trouble suspending disbelief, and the scene where she is facing ravening hoards of invading aliens with a tiny pistol just made me giggle, and pulled me out of the film a bit.  It was fun watching her do martial arts, but many of the hits she took would have left her with every bone in her body broken.  At least have had Stark make her a suit or something.

I loved the fact the heroes didn’t all get along.  They have very different personalities and agendas and egos.  I was impressed with the moment when The Cap had a machine gun in his hands again, and his whole physical attitude changed.  Up til then he had been quite tentative but,  this he understood.

Black Widow was clever in her dealings with Loki which I really liked, and Agent Phil Coulson got his moment.  He’s been such a quiet little presence in all the movies, and he got to shine here.  I like that kind of continuity.

I have a very few quibbles.  I thought it started a little slow.  I really needed a little better explanation or at least a consistent explanation for why Loki has such a hard on about conquering the Earth, and I won’t see it in 3D when I go back for a second time.  The action is fast, the camera moving fast, and that just doesn’t work when you retro the 3D.  It made all the colors dim, and the whole thing seemed muddy.  Movies like Avatar and Hugo that were filmed as 3D are beautiful.  What they did to The Avengers just didn’t work.