"The Avengers" is done well by Joss Whedon, with style and energy. It provides its fans with exactly what they desire.
Critic Score: 3/4

Audiences have been eagerly anticipating this first all-hero extravaganza for years. The wait was worth it.
Critic Score: 3/4

The light, amusing bits cannot overcome the grinding, hectic emptiness, the bloated cynicism that is less a shortcoming of this particular film than a feature of the genre.
Critic Score: 2/5

Whedon is the key reason why this $220-million behemoth of a movie is smartly thought out and executed with verve and precision. It may be overly long at two hours, 23 minutes, but so much is going on you might not even notice.
Critic Score: 4/5

Its primary purpose is not to explore or subvert the superhero movie, but to lay the groundwork for more of them.

Never underestimate the entertainment value of the Hulk Smash.

Ultimately, it all comes back to Whedon: His clear vision for each character and how they might be profitably intermingled; his unexpected knack for action choreography; his funny, tender, immaculately constructed script.

The banter has zip, the effects are fun, the climactic battle is decently spectacular, and if the 3-D is mostly expendable, there are a few scenes where it adds a nice kick.

If you are a Marvel fan, then The Avengers will feel like Christmas. Thanks to the merry doings of the director, Joss Whedon, all your favorite characters are here, as shiny and as tempting as presents under the tree.

Whedon, a pop-genre magician best known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is a master of viewer manipulation - because he never gives up his own seat in the crowd.
Critic Score: 4/4

The film is good enough to keep all the Marvel Comics crazed audiences out there deliriously happy while keeping the rest of us earthbound types in moderate thralldom.
Critic Score: B

A slow start, a single star performance surrounded by indifferent acting and an onslaught of computer effects that range from seen-it-all-in-"Transformers" to a whole sky full of spectacular stuff in the midtown Manhattan climax.

Every now and then, director Joss Whedon executes a quirky camera set-up to assert that the film was created by him and not a team of marketing executives.

A slickly packaged, effects-driven smashup.
Critic Score: 2.5/4

You don't need to be a "comic-book person" to find the set pieces exhilarating. But if you are such a person, or a fan of the movies that comic books turn into, "The Avengers" feels like the moment you've been waiting for.
Critic Score: 3/4

To watch another comic book transformed into another blockbuster is to "marvel" at much and to feel nothing - that's a safer bet than the converse, perhaps, which may explain the genre's popularity.
Critic Score: 2/4

Really, who cares about another battle? We know how this is going to end.

This is a movie that knows and deeply loves its audience, but it's funny, smart and good-natured enough to please the rest of us, too.
Critic Score: 3/4

Whedon's investment in building this world is so complete that it captures the audience, as well.
Critic Score: 4.5/5

All hail Joss Whedon, the warrior king of this dizzying, dazzling 3D action epic. The Avengers is Transformers with a brain, a heart and a working sense of humor.
Critic Score: 3.5/4

Comic-Con nerds will have multiple orgasms. I had a blast.

Like a superior, state-of-the-art model built from reconstituted parts, Joss Whedon's buoyant, witty and robustly entertaining superhero smash-up is escapism of a sophisticated order.