Iron Man Movie Review

By Prairie Miller

As blockbuster movie-toons continue to run out of imagination and ideas, the scramble heats up to give the appearance of something new and different, out of the cookie-cutter mega-million bucks flashy products. And Iron Man is no exception.

Sporting a novel brand of superhero, with dollar sign desperation written all over it, Iron Man's got goofy Robert Downey Jr. characteristically wisecracking his way through unlikely feats with all the determination of someone who just wandered in from the corner bar. And that bit of hip business is likely tossed in to keep the grownups amused if not awake, while the kids and fanboys in the audience gush over the fantasy hardware. No wonder funny man filmmaker, Jon 'Swingers' Favreau was recruited to direct. Genius move, or ploy?

Channeling the basics from the latest comic to screen Marvel series transplant, Iron Man conceives of tipsy celebrity playboy and international arms peddler Tony Stark (Downey Jr. ) as a kind of reinvented and preposterously rehabilitated (which he never was) Howard Hughes. Kidnapped by a bunch of generic Middle Eastern meanies while plying his wares on the other side of the world, Stark is kidnapped and instructed to build his captors a missile. But he instead gets his head into the concoction of an extreme fashion statement, while reinventing himself as a Tin Man savior of the planet. And undergoing a moral conversion, though oddly no less militaristic.

Favreau, whose own strength lies in character development rather far fetched physical prowess on screen, skimps on the latter in a genre thoroughly dependent on impressing with its muscular mechanics. Meanwhile, sidekicks Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Rhodey (Terrence Howard) are essentially wallpaper to the main attraction. Overly sarcastic new packaging with rusty ideas.

Paramount Pictures
Rated PG-13
2 stars