I know it's a huge cliche, but Magic definitely fits into the "easy to learn, tough to master" category. Every card is pretty self explanitory as to what it does, just read what the card says. The only time things get tricky is when cards come with special mechanics attached. Sometimes (particularly for new mechanics) it'll explain what the mechanic does, but other times you could be left wondering. In that case it's best to simply ask one of the people you're playing with "Hey, what the heck does Cascade do?"
If you're really interested in getting into the game, I'd suggest to try getting one of the digital Duels of the Planeswalkers games for like XBLA. It's good since you can play against the computer, and you can learn a lot about the game in just a couple hours. Though really this'll only give you a basic understanding of the game, it's still best if you have a good friend that can show you the tricks and the intricacies of the game.
Once you begin getting the hang of things you can start to see what your play style is and what colors best match up with that. Are you the type that likes a good ol' Zerg Rush? Then the speed of Red's cards will be to your liking. Perhaps you prefer having just a bunch of big beasties to pound your opponents into submission? Then Green is for you. If you believe the best offense is a good defense, I'd look into playing White. Black, of course, has plenty of insta-kill cards. And Blue is more for controlling the flow of the game, allowing you to draw extra cards, counter opponents spells (meaning prevent them from being cast/nullify their effects), and since one of the rules of the game is that you automatically lose if you run out of cards to draw from your deck, there's some Blue decks that are designed specifically for that purpose: burning through the opponent's deck rather than going for their HP.
Mono-color decks are good because you only have to worry about finding one color of land whie you're playing. Multi-colored decks are more versitile (i.e. Green/Black having big creatures for you while also having the ability to insta-kill all your opponent's creatures so your creatures can pound directly at the opponent's HP. However, there's a delightful term known as "mana screwed". This is when you can't find a piece of Land to save your life, or perhaps most of the cards in your hand at the moment are green but all you've got is black land. So indeed, multi-colored decks are versitile, but you can get mana screwed more easily.
Edit: But those are just some basic tid-bits about the game. Again, I'd really suggest getting one of the digital Duels of the Planeswalkers games. Play around with it for a while and you'll start to get the hang of things. Watch what the computer does, how it times its abilities, how it uses its cards, etc and you'll be off to a good start.
