Deborah Ross

Less than Marvellous

I’m genuinely perplexed as to how people think this movie has emotional depth

Captain America: Civil War is the 897th instalment — or something like it — in the Marvel comic franchise. This time round, the superheroes take sides, with the marketing asking if you’re #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan but not if you’re #TeamNeither, as would be most useful in my case. I swear this is the last Marvel film I will see as I never get anything out of them and whatever I say only sets the fans against me, which is not what you want at my age.

I only attended this one because I had read the American critics (and some of the British ones who’d had a heads up). They all said, at last, a decent Avengers movie with ‘emotional depth’ and ‘moral complexity’, and now I have to question what planet they’re living on. Seriously, if this is ‘emotional depth’ and ‘moral complexity’ then my old cat Daphne can play the ukulele, which clearly she cannot.

It features the usual suspects. Must we? List them? I suppose we must. So we have Captain America (that big chump Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jnr, who doesn’t so much phone it in these days as have his PA phone it in for him) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, whose PA’s PA phones it in) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner, who, as always, has almost nothing to do) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olson; deadly dull) and the weird one with the red face (Paul Bettany) who is always popping up. Plus, Paul Rudd makes an appearance as Ant-Man while Tom Holland trucks up as a wide-eyed teenage Spider-Man, complete with yet another origins story. Considering the number of origins stories Spider-Man has accrued to date, I’m amazed he can swing from his web given the weight of them. (Perhaps he sometimes asks: ‘Can I shed six of my origins stories before I go in for the swing?’)

The action — must we? I suppose so — opens not in Tuscany, where the Avengers are quietly enjoying one of those holidays where you learn to make pasta, which would at least make a change.

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