Captain America is the definition of mindless and enjoyable, like Thor and Iron Man before it. It’s well-paced, full of action, and faithful to its source material. Frankly, it’s what we should expect out of most comic book movies. It’s not great, but like any other summer action movie it’s entertaining enough to watch at least once in the theaters whenever it’s on cable. It doesn’t try to have the dramatic weight of The Dark Knight or Watchmen, but it doesn’t try to. It doesn’t have to. It’s genre-oriented fun, with little thematic vision beyond what’s exactly on the box and a big streak of love for the comic fans. That’s what makes it great.

If you’re remotely familiar with Captain America (or have watched the trailer), you know exactly what to expect. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a scrawny kid in 1940′s America who gets into a government super-soldier program and becomes Captain America. He fights the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and carries a shield and it’s all very four-color. Underneath the plot is a strong, blunt theme of “bullying is bad,” which is expressed in several excellent scenes with Rogers and Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci, looking very much like a thin, hung-over Saul Rubenik). It explores this scene with some surprisingly subtle scenes, contrasting Rogers as a “little guy” compared to the enlisted soldiers’ “big guys” without making the “big guys” look like complete meathead bullies. It’s a nice touch, but it doesn’t carry much weight in the movie.

The acting is Captain America’s weakest part, but none of it is bad. It’s just strangely detached. Chris Evans pulls off the role of Captain America well, despite a generally stone-faced demeanor and very little emotion. He and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) share a WWII bromance, but it’s without much mirth or joking; they exchange both barbs and affectionate comments with the same blank faces. Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull is surprisingly constrained and free of outright scenery chewing. He acts imposing, he talks about how he’s superior to everyone, he wants to take over the world, but it lacks the color energy he had in The Matrix or V for Vendetta, which really pushed him over the top as a memorable character. Tommy Lee Jones’ Colonel Philips steals the show, channeling Michael Ironside in Starship Troopers as the archetypical gruff, nurturing commander.

The action’s great, though slow to start. When Captain America really goes nuts in the third act, though, it’s comic book perfect. He uses his shield to block bullets, energy blasts, and flame throwers, flinging it like a giant death frisbee to catch countless Hydra soldiers on the rebound. The choreography is fluid and the shield effect looks great. The conventional fighting is very well-done for a PG-13 movie, getting downright brutal with both sides taking heavy losses during one scene that faces off the army against Hydra.

Hydra brings us to the most important part of Captain America, which should let you know whether you’ll feel lukewarm about it or outright love it: this movie is written with comic book nerds in mind. First, structurally it follows Captain America’s modern origin: at the height of World War II, he gets frozen in ice. That’s the end of the movie to set up the Avengers, and you need to realize that right away. It’s not really a part of the plot, just an end-piece to connect to The Avengers and to explain why Captain America’s in the 21st century.

Second, it incorporates a lot of features that comic fans will appreciate but more mainstream watchers might not get. For instance, Red Skull runs Hydra, a scientific research division of the Nazis that split off when the Red Skull realized his designs on the world were greater than Hitler’s. While the Red Skull helped rekindle Hydra in the early Marvel books, it’s not necessarily his or the group’s canon origins. It works because it keeps the enemy Aryan and sinister, it separates the super-science advances of the Red Skull from the rest of the German army, and it keeps the focus on the Red Skull and not Hitler himself.

Third, it’s loaded with superhero shout-outs. There’s a mention of the original Human Torch (an android who eventually turned into the Vision), a sight gag of Dr. Zola’s face in a computer screen (he eventually put his brain in a robot that showed his face on a screen in its stomach), and the prominent inclusion of the (unnamed) Howling Commandos, Nick Fury’s unit in World War II. Fury isn’t in the film until the end because they’re not making him a youth serum-augmented soldier like in the comics, but the other commandos are there. Non-comic-fans might wonder why a guy with mutton chops and a bowler hat fights alongside Captain America. Comic fans will say, “Awesome, that’s Dum-Dum Duggan!”

Captain America is a movie for the fans, and it satisfies. It also does a great job of setting up The Avengers, putting the last piece of the puzzle into one of the most ambitious overarching movie projects in decades. At the very least, it’s worth a watch. If you’re a comic fan, it’s gonna be worth a buy when the Blu-ray comes out. At the very least, it stands as a “In a few years, when this is on TNT randomly, you’ll turn to it if nothing else specific is on” movie.