The Avengers

At first, we had no interest in seeing The Avengers but after hearing rave reviews from friends, we had to watch it. Armed with our 3D glasses, we were very much looking forward to our movie date night at the cinema.

I found the movie highly entertaining, what you would call a classic blockbuster - it had explosions, crashes, massive monstrous things, super-heroes and impressive 3D effects - action-packed entertainment that required no heavy thinking.

Way back when I was working as a movie publicist, my colleagues and I used to joke about how to predict if a movie would do well at the box office. A sure measure was if there was the lethal combination of a) a monster, and b) water. With this, everything else - cast, storyline, etc - just needed to be mediocre. Our case in point was Lake Placid, which if you've seen it, you'll know exactly what I mean about the movie being really sub-par. But it did extremely well at the box office because it was pure gormless entertainment.

My husband didn't like The Avengers (I guess he's not the man in the street that mass movies appeal to), but I did. Robert Downey Jr provided all the laughs as Tony Stark, Chris Evans made a good Captain America even though if you think about it, fighting with his shield does seem a little cumbersome in light of the sophisticated weapons that the enemy was brandishing. For some reason, I kept thinking Colin Farrell was Thor (even though I know he wasn't), and seeing the demi-god wield his hammer also seems a tad funny, if you stop to think about it. I think in every super-hero movie, you just need to suspend disbelief. Once you get that out of the way, you can sit back and be entertained.

Mark Ruffalo was a good Hulk although he talks like he's got marbles in his mouth when he's Bruce Banner. I like the scene where he's revealing his secret and then transforms in mid-air into the Hulk (nice CGI work!). Jeremy Renner was some super-hero that I don't even know, but he had a good scene where he leapt off the building, did a flip, and shot his arrow backwards (!). Scarlett Johansson wasn't particularly impressive but neither was her portrayal overtly gratuitous.

All in all, an entertaining movie which did actually look better in 3D.