A pretty fun Superman cartoon, but really, these are kind of hard to distinguish from each other. In this one, an evil scientist is using robots to steal jewels. When Lois and Clark witness a robbery, Lois sneaks into the robot's storage compartment and gets whisked away to be captured by the scientist. She's brave in these things, but almost totally without any sense for self-preservation. Some nice fighting between Superman and the robots, and of course a breathless last-minute rescue. Funnily enough, they played this at the AMC as part of the pre-program entertainment when we went to see the This American Life Live show. Don't know if it's This American Life or Fathom Events that decided to do that, but it was a great surprise. We need more short films in theatres, and as part of other programs.

I figured I'd go ahead and watch this before The Avengers comes out, since I had missed it in theatres the year it came out. "Missed" isn't the right word. I heard bad things about it and opted not to go. And yeah, this movie is pretty boring, especially for an action movie. There are only like two and a half actual action scenes in it.

The first hour or so I was kind of bored stiff - there were some good ideas in there, like Tony being poisoned by the thing that's saving him, but the film just uses it as an excuse for him to wallow in self-pity (somehow he manages to be arrogant AND self-pitying at the same time) and do ridiculously stupid things.

It picked up in the last third, after he met with Nick Fury and Black Widow (as herself, I mean, not as office drone Natalie), and I perked up a good bit, but even so. The good bits (callbacks to Howard Stark, a fun performance by Sam Rockwell, decently choreographed if overly digital-looking fight sequences) couldn't save the dismal script.

Easily the worst of the Avengers lead-up movies I've seen (the only one I'm missing is Incredible Hulk). Not only is the script a mess, but it's deadly dull for extended portions of its overlong running time, and that's pretty much the worst sin a film like this can commit.

I've never had this bizarre a reaction to a film before. From scene to scene, and sometimes within a scene (within a shot!) I'd go from loving the film to hating it, from appreciating the dialogue and performances to thinking they were overblown and ridiculous. There are some scenes in here that work brilliantly, and others threw me right out of the movie. Yet I can't always point to what exact things made the difference.

Part of it is Taylor's performance, which is far too histrionic most of the time, but when she settles, she's very good. Yet other times, her raging actually does work. Like I said, bizarre. Burton's performance is much more even and understandable to me. Anyway. I think I overall liked the film, mostly because the last scene is extremely well-played (though it gives me pause about some story elements) and helped negate some of my discomfort at other sections, but I still kind of feel weird about it.

This is gonna be an...interesting one to write up fully. We'll see if thinking about it for a few days settles my mind on it any better. For now I'm gonna give it 3 1/2 stars, but that may go up or down. Yet to be determined.