Angry ’cause his ears are plastic.

Captain America
Starring: Matt Salinger, Ronny Cox, Scott Paulin, Ned Beatty
Directed by Albert Pyun
1990

Captain America has always been the other white meat of superheroes, a dashing patriot who only crosses people’s minds when Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman have all gone on vacation. This movie even admits such in its first twenty minutes. One of the scientists working on turning young Steve Rogers into a chemically-enhanced super soldier literally says something like, “He’s no Superman, but Captain America can get the job done.” That’s some cold shit to say right in front of a masked do-gooder. Do you think Batman ever told the second Robin he wasn’t as good as the first Robin? I mean, he wasn’t, but telling him that would only work to demotivate the poor stupid kid.

There’s more embarrassment to come for Cap in this clumsy 1990 outing. Turns out Steve Rogers is directly responsible for the murders of JFK, RFK, and MLK (all because he failed to kill nefarious WWII villain Red Skull, who for some reason is Italian and not German in this movie). On top of that, the government sewed plastic ears onto Steve’s hero hood, and that’s really distracting when he’s trying to stand stoically in beams of light. According to legend, the ear holes originally cut into Matt Salinger’s Captain America hood chaffed the actor’s real ears too much. Poor baby. He’s lucky his dad is JD Salinger, or else they probably just would have let that hood chafe the damn ears right off his head. Michael Keaton doesn’t have a famous daddy, so no one listened when he complained his Batman boots were giving him gout. That’s why he hardly acts any more—Michael Keaton can barely walk.

I’m joking, of course. A lot of critics have dumped on Matt Salinger’s performance as Steve Rogers/Captain America over the years, but I think he does a pretty good job here. Heck, all the actors are alright in Captain America. The real problem is wonky camera work and editing. Half the time, you can’t really tell what’s happening in the action scenes. A lot of pivotal stuff is also merely implied. At the end of the film, we basically have to guess what fate befalls Red Skull’s evil daughter. Does she go flying off a cliff? Does Cap’s famous shield cut her body in half? No one knows, because they don’t show bunk. Of course, the couple times they do bother to show something, like when Captain America is strapped to the rocket that narrowly avoids hitting the White House, it looks about as true to life as your average episode of “Gumby.” So I guess that’s the trade off.

But hey, Darren McGavin is in this flick, and so is the lady who played his wife in A Christmas Story, Melinda Dillon! It’s like a little Christmas Story reunion. At one point, they almost trick you into believing you’re looking at Ralphie from that movie, but it just turns out to be Ned Beatty’s kid (and—surprise, surprise—he’s playing a young Ned Beatty). In the end, you could do a lot worse than Captain America when it comes to comic book entertainment. Of course, I liked Ang Lee’s Hulk, so what the hell do I know?

FINAL SCORE: Two and a half young Ned Beattys (out of four).