'Avengers: Age of Ultron': Hulking, but funny

EARLY reports pegged the new "Avengers" as "Transformers" with better writers, and that's true, but there's more going on.

This is the first comic-book franchise movie, surely, that will send millions of dudes out of theaters in a frenzy of gossip.

Hulk and Black Widow!

I share their amazement.

I was just getting used to the idea of Captain America and Black Widow, last year's cutest movie couple (though I guess anything beats Nick and Amy from "Gone Girl").

That's over. Black Widow's moved on to greener pastures.

This raises intriguing issues. What happens when Hulk gets excited (Hulk smooch!), as is sure to happen when a woman in the leather-clad form of Scarlett Johansson expresses keen interest?

Hulk (and Thompson) not want to find out.

When Black Widow suggests that they shower together, the two have an intimate conversation about a possible romance, in which Hulk (in the form of Mark Ruffalo) announces that such a love affair would be "physically impossible."

What does that mean?

So, it's saucy fun but poorly explained, a fair description of "Ultron," which papers over a baffling plot and stock CGI action with a generous supply of wisecracks.

Highlight: an amusing party sequence wherein the Avengers listen to jazz and drink cosmos while Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) argue as to who has the brainier girlfriend.

They love smart, tough girls, and so does director Joss Whedon, who has the rare ability to welcome women to fantasy/action fare in a way that appeals to both genders ("Angel," "Firefly," "Buffy").

In Whedon's "Avengers," men still wield the heavy hammers and handle the complex tech crap. Women have the soft power - they know everyone's secrets, and manage conflicts, and keep the chest-thumping men socialized.

This is necessary to help the Avengers combat their new common enemy: a robot who absorbs Iron Man's AI prototype, meant for mankind's defense, and turns hostile, with the contemptuous voice of James Spader, which hasn't changed much since "Less Than Zero" (his last movie with Downey).

He is, like most modern computer-animated movie robots, a bore. Worse, he announces at roughly the two-hour mark that he's replicating himself - "like a Catholic rabbit" - but Whedon's jokes can't relieve the despair at the prospect of having to watch another IMAX robot melee.

If you've seen one, you've seen them all. In Hollywood, this has yielded a corollary: If you've seen them all, we've made good money showing them to you, and so you'll keep getting them, like Kevin James security-guard movies, until you say uncle.

And there's this: The movie leaked widely online Monday, where fans can watch it in a form that captures Whedon's humor and wit. What their tablets and phones can't really capture is the spectacle of (sigh) a massive robot fight.

The scale and noise is probably compulsory, Hollywood's last line of defense against online piracy. Perhaps that's why as a director of action here, Whedon seems disengaged. He tries to punch up the finale with contributions from new characters - Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor Johnson), and something purple with a British accent played by Paul Bettany - but this just adds to the everybody-gets-their-two-minutes chaos.

Whedon himself seems exhausted. I don't think he cares about robot fights any more than we do, and they seem to have gotten in the way of more serious material, like a critique of the surveillance/security state, in which Avengers are not strictly the good guys, as moral compass Captain America (Chris Evans) tersely implies at one point.

Whedon can barely keep a straight face for the teaser - something about intergalactic magic stones - for the next time the Avengers get together.

By which point Hulk and Black Widow may have the logistics of their relationship figured out. Let's hope so. They'd make a smashing pair.