The Captain America naysayers on Rotten Tomatoes have been shoved back and out-flanked. Joe Johnston’s film was hovering at 60%-or-lower yesterday, but the positive rating is now at 71% with a few more reviews to come. Are the neg-heads scattering and running for tall grass? I don’t want to gloat.

“By finding an ingenious way to streamline a now-familiar genre — and by providing a means to fill up your muggy summer afternoon watching hordes of evil soldiers gettin’ their arsche handed to them by a true-blue Sentinel of Liberty — Captain America: The First Avenger does his country proud.” — from a review by npr.org’s Glenn Wheldon.

“There is something miraculous in what Johnston and company have created from the hero that Jack Kirby and Joe Simon first unveiled in 1941. This is a big-scale movie that feels intimate, an action adventure built with the precision of a thriller, a popcorn lark that quotes knowledgeably from a list of influences as diverse as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Medal of Honor videogames and Johnston’s own fine 1991 film The Rocketeer.

“It entertains zestily but treats you like a grown up; it has spectacles and sensations and all sorts of gee-wizardry, but there are heart and brains and taste, too. Like the best comic book films, Captain America is a feast of geekery that will gratify the most ardent acolytes of its hero. But it’s likely to amuse, enthrall and satisfy just about anyone with a sense of fun.” — from Shawn Levy‘s Oregonian review.