With just under a year until ‘The Avengers’ hit the big screen, Marvel fans are bursting at the seams to see if the latest and penultimate instalment in the series lives up to expectations.

It did, both positively and negatively. With Captain America we got a solid action film in the comic genre, a good lead in to Whedon’s Avengers in 2012 and a great casting choice for Captain America.

Unfortunately what we also got was Joe Johnston directing the film. More than most directors (except M. Night Shyamalan) Johnston is notoriously more miss than hit. Jumanji worked, Jurassic Park III and most of his other directorial projects haven’t.

For those who haven’t read the comics or are concerned you “won’t get it” – don’t worry. One of the reasons “Captain America” worked so well is the ability for the film to stand completely alone. The film is set in World War II, some 70 years before the Avengers storyline and the other films including ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Thor’.

Captain America starts out as scrawny and sickly Steve Rogers whose heart is in the right place as he continuously enlists in the US Army. Unfortunately his body, not being as big as his heart results in every enlistment being followed by a subsequent rejection. That is, until he meets Dr Erskine who sees in Rogers the qualities of a true hero.

The U.S. Government being unsure if Erskine’s experiment is completely successful decide to use Rogers – a.k.a. Captain America as a propaganda and entertainment tool until he finds his friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is M.I.A. Lo and behold, Rogers begins realising the extent of his abilities and Captain America is born.

Now Joe Johnston didn’t do as bad job with Captain America as he could have – what we ended up with was a fairly good superhero flick, following the traditional superhero formula. We had good use of CGI, which one would expect considering the director was one of the visual effects minds behind Star Wars, solid acting from Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell and Tommy Lee Jones.

Where I think Johnston once again fell over was his reliance on cliché, corny scripting and lack of real character or plot development. The romance between Steve and Peggy was an obvious inclusion in the film however wasn’t developed properly so left us feeling flat and the tension between the two seemed to be thrown in because it is part of the expected formula.

My other main concern was that I wanted to see Cap take on the Nazis and HYDRA weren’t really a believable component, especially with the emphasis on technology. Even then, a lot of the storyline was implied action and all we saw was clips and cuts of Cap riding a motorcycle or shooting bad guys.

I also think the use of 3D could have been a lot better. Not once did I feel like I was going to be hit in the head by Cap’s shield!

Take the corny script, bad development and mediocre directing out of the mix and we are still left with a fairly good movie. In some ways this is more disappointing as with the right person at the helm, this could have been so much more.

Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell and Tommy Lee Jones all performed exceptionally with the script they had. Tommy Lee Jones is always a joy to watch. I was looking forward to Hugo Weaving’s performance however found him very cliché and was just waiting for him start calling Captain America ‘Mr Anderson’.

Hayley Atwell is a definite up and comer. Recently seen in the television mini-series of ‘Pillars of the Earth’ she is really displaying some big screen potential.

Good acting, solid CGI and a solid superhero got this film to ‘good’ when I was hoping for ‘great’. I definitely think the film enjoyable and worth seeing – I’m just debating whether or not I’d see it again.