The Summer Movie Season of 2011 has just about wrapped itself up. So, did you see everything? Here are brief reviews for every big budget movie that hit the screens this summer and whether or not you should put it at the top of your Netflix queue:

Must See

Captain America: Marvel’s latest comic book effort hit all the right notes as a modern action flick set against a cheesy 1940s propaganda background. The movie never really allows itself time to drag, and any overacting on the part of the actors is covered by the movie not really taking itself too seriously (oh, Hugo Weaving, you cad).

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: You can’t spend a decade watching a movie series and then just give up on it before the 8th film. Despite being the second half of one book, it flies through plot points almost too quickly at times, never really bothering to explain anything to the audience anymore. Still, it’s a satisfying conclusion to an increasingly grown-up franchise.

Worth A Look

Hangover 2: It’s The Hangover, but in a foreign country! Isn’t that crazy?! If you’re one of those people who constantly quotes the movie and wears a baby pouch t-shirt (stop), you’ll love it. Otherwise, it’s just sort of there, some funny jokes but nothing special compared to the first.

X-Men: First Class: A very cool, stylized relaunch of a franchise, which Marvel clearly put a lot of work into recrafting. It takes the odd tact of integrating itself directly into the previous X-Men trilogy, which limits potential for future movies and makes it very predictable. But still, it’s a solid movie.

Bridesmaids: Sort of the raunchy female answer to the Hangover films. It’s an effective vehicle to get a lot of female comedians out there, and it hits more often than it misses. Still, there’s not much to it, more of an afternoon waster than a film you need to have in your collection.

Thor: Marvel’s marginally less successful superhero film this summer. It does a lot of things right, including Chris Hemsworth as the titular god. But the classic Thor origin story never really gained any actual traction, and let’s face it, Kevin Nash made a better Odin than Anthony Hopkins.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides: The movie actually loses a lot not having Keria Knightley and Orlando Bloom around playing straight(wo)men for the weird antics around them. Johnny Depp is as charming as ever, and the ride is a lot of fun, but it really felt like it was missing a little something.

Only If You’re Bored

Green Lantern: DC made a decent attempt to ride Marvel’s coattails on the Silly Superhero front, but Green Lantern isn’t a very interesting superhero. Plus, the storytelling in the film was muddled and ultimately not very good. Ryan Reynolds (who was clearly having a lot of fun with the role) deserved better.

Super 8: Like many of J.J. Abram’s other projects, this was weird and promising but really just didn’t end up going anywhere. Very similar to the 2008 film Cloverfield, the movie relies a lot on its actors and settings to sell a scary threat you never see. In both movies it works around half the time.

Cars 2: Pixar’s first real “miss,” Cars 2 attempts to be all things for all audiences, but what it noticeably isn’t is a very good sequel to the first film. Main characters get shifted into subplots in an effort to get Larry the Cable Guy to show us why clean fuel is the way to go.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon: The plot makes no sense, the action scenes are weird re-hashed versions of scenes from the two prior films (or other Bay movies) and the acting is terrible. That said? It’s a lot of stupid fun, and the 3D is fantastic, better than in any other movie this summer. Not that that will mean a lot to you at home.

Don’t Bother

Cowboys and Aliens: Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford cash in on a weird scifi tale that never really goes anywhere. Craig’s clearly just here waiting for that Bond script to get finalized, and Ford’s just looking to get out of the house. Jon Favreau probably misses Iron Man already.

Mr. Poppers Penguins: Jim Carrey clearly doesn’t know how to get his career back on track, and he’s slipping even further with stuff like this. Making crazy faces while animals do silly things just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Just for Kids

Winnie the Pooh: Straight to video production released on the big screen. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily, sometimes kids just want to go to the theater to go. But it’ll work better on DVD.

Kung Fu Panda: Blah cash-in sequel to a sort of blah franchise. Still, I love me some Jack Black, and there’s enough here for kids to have a good time and parents to relax a bit.

Smurfs: A pretty big waste of a lot of B-List talent. Still, not as offensively bad as you might think, and if you go in expecting a new kids movie instead of an update of your beloved cartoon from your youth, it’s mildly entertaining.

Let me start off by telling you what X-Men: First Class is not. It is not, as I had expected, a *wink wink* reboot of the franchise like J.J. Abram’s Star Trek. It is not X-Men Origins: Origins like was promised when the original Magneto movie was announced. Familiar actors in different settings, trying to tell you a whole new story.

The truth of the matter is, I’m not sure what First Class is, and I don’t know if it does either. In between scenes of Kevin Bacon hamming it up and James McAvoy playing Charles Xavier as half brilliant professor/half Austin Powers, there’s some real meat here, especially in scenes that follow Michael Fassbender’s broody, steely eyed Magneto.

But most disconcerting is that it’s a prequel movie that doesn’t quite know where to go with its concept. On paper, it’s a lot of great ideas. Magneto/Xavier origin stories, how they meet, how the X-Men team is formed, the X-Men as a division of the CIA, Cuban Missile crisis! But even at over two hours long, it’s never content to settle on any of it, so major plot points are diluted into montages and major character developments are delivered in weird monologues. Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique is especially shafted, as she does a fantastic job of telling an entire character arch through what essentially boils down to three awkwardly written conversations with Xavier, Beast, and Magneto.

But what owns to probably the most grievous of the films errors is how self aware it is. The film holds itself rather closely to the previous three X-Men movies, to the point where there are two rather large cameos that seem to exist for the purpose of generating a laugh and pointing out that this is the exact same X-Men Universe. And it sort of kills the suspense involved in the Magneto character’s entire existence if you know that by the end of the movie, he’s going to be the villain.

Which, of course, begs the question of where you go with the inevitable sequels? I mean, there are still stories to be told, but not too shortly, James McAvoy has to morph into Patrick Stewart. It just seems like a weirdly limiting idea for a franchise reboot.

But, fear not True Believers, because as most of my concerns aside? This is just a good, fun movie. Most of my critiques didn’t hit me until the credits were already rolling, because even at two hours, everything moves at such a frenetic pace that you don’t have time to really think about what’s going on until you’re past it.

Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender are the stars of the movie. Their portrayals of Mystique and Magneto, and their struggles to come to grips with their sordid pasts and present mutanthood really carry the film. James McAvoy is good as Charles Xavier, but like I said, it’s an odd take on the character. He’s never struck me as the “Groovy, baby!” type.

The minor characters are all fairly well done, though none really take much of an active role in the plot. Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian Shaw feels like he’s from a whole different movie made in the 1980s, but he’s never around long enough to get offensive about it. January Jones isn’t asked to do much and she doesn’t. Rose Byrne does a good job facilitating for the humans as Special Agent Moira McTaggert.

Nicholas Hoult as Beast was a good casting choice, but he never really hits his stride. That might have been the script though, as all he does is drone about how nobody likes him because of his big feet, and it’s really hard to relate seeing as how nobody had apparently even noticed for twenty years, and he has Jennifer Lawrence slobbering over him for a majority of the film. The rest of the supporting cast pretty much just gets one or two scenes to show off their powers, and then stand around in the background, and all of them were fine.

So, in the end does it overcome it’s faults? Yes. It’s an experience worth having just to get a scope of the X-Men Universe, and a slightly different take on the characters in it. Some of the acting performances really do shine here, and it’s worth seeing to catch some of the up and coming stars of this generation (and January Jones).

8/10

Should You Go?: Yep. It’s a fun “lose yourself” Hollywood movie, that delivers on the action and acting if nothing else. Bring a friend and tear apart the plot holes afterwards.