 Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter gave a positive review of the film , remarking , " It 's clamorous , the save @-@ the @-@ world story is one everyone 's seen time and again , and the characters have been around for more than half a century in 500 comic book issues . But Whedon and his cohorts have managed to stir all the personalities and ingredients together so that the resulting dish , however familiar , is irresistibly tasty again . " To Rolling Stone journalist Peter Travers , the film epitomized an exceptional blockbuster . " It 's also the blockbuster , " Travers said , " I saw in my head when I imagined a movie that brought together the idols of the Marvel world in one shiny , stupendously exciting package . It 's Transformers with a brain , a heart and a working sense of humor . " Justin Chang of Variety wrote , " Like a superior , state @-@ of @-@ the @-@ art model built from reconstituted parts , Joss Whedon 's buoyant , witty and robustly entertaining superhero smash @-@ up is escapism of a sophisticated order , boasting a tonal assurance and rich reserves of humor that offset the potentially lumbering and unavoidably formulaic aspects of this 143 @-@ minute team @-@ origin story . " Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times complimented the film 's frenetic pace , while Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun @-@ Times commented that it " provides its fans with exactly what they desire . Whether it is exactly what they deserve is arguable " . Conversely , A. O. Scott of The New York Times believed that " while The Avengers is hardly worth raging about , its failures are significant and dispiriting . The light , amusing bits cannot overcome the grinding , hectic emptiness , the bloated cynicism that is less a shortcoming of this particular film than a feature of the genre . " 
