Zack’s Review of Iron Man 2

Ok,¬†I guess¬†I get to be the bad guy on this one. Iron Man 2 is terrible. Serously. Terrible. Ok ok.¬†I like the … the race scene¬†I guess. So instead of saying it was bad (I’ll backpedal here a little and say that the movie isn’t terrible in the entire negatively-associated sense of the word – it’s actually pretty far away from actual terribility), I will say it was just as far, far, incredibly far away from being anywhere close to being associated with any words that have anything in common with “good.”

I recognize that I’m the only person I know that didn’t like this movie. So I’m willing to consider that it’s my fault and not the movie’s that I didn’t get into it. It’s also important I mention that I didn’t go in as a complete stick-in-the-mud. I’m not a fan of Robert Downey, Jr.’s (excepting of course Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), and so I took my sweet time to see the first Iron Man, but against my expectations, I really liked it. So¬†I was completely expecting to like this one too is my point.

Zack’s Laundry List of Beef:
* The entire movie seems fairly anticlimactic. Iron Tony spends more time in the movie fighting with his friends instead of fighting the baddies.
* Don Cheadle rocks.
* DJ AM does not.
* While I was hoping to get a grizzled, tough-guy World War II veteran Nick Fury, Samuel L. Jackson instead falls back on his old stand-by of acting exactly like Samuel L. Jackson. I love me some Samuel L., but he’s so content acting like himself in every movie, that even though he’s better than Hasselhoff, I can’t help but be a little disappointed in his¬†Fury.
* The jokes didn’t make me laugh, and while¬†I love Paltrow as much as a fan of¬†Shakespeare in Love and¬†The Royal Tenenbaums should, her undeniable sweetness as Pepper Potts didn’t help her deliver the flat script.
* I’ve got no problems with Mickey Rourke as the technologically savage Ivan Vanko except to say that he sure does giggle a lot for an angry, vengeful, murderous super-villain.
* Sam Rockwell … well, Sam Rockwell does absolutely nothing wrong. He’s the man. As Tony’s rival arms dealer, Justin Hammer, he crafts the perfect whimpering pack-dog in the face of Tony’s alpha-male personality – the problem in the performance is all director Jon Favreau’s. Even though Rockwell is given plenty of mini-monologues across from Downey, Jr. and Rourke, Favreau does absolutely nothing with editing or musical score to help him out. All his spotlight scenes end up feeling more like daytime television than blockbuster villainy.
* Scarlett Johansson’s¬†Black Widow was actually not sultry enough for my comic book sensabilities, and her total rip-off of WWF superstar Lita’s Hurricanrana had me laughing more at her big action moment than cheering her on. Ironically, this is the best scene in the whole movie and leaves me wondering how good a movie can be when it relies almost completely on cameos.
* Speaking of unnecessary cameos and my distaste for Jon Favreau – I literally could not stop rolling my eyes every time he took to the screen in his look-at-me-look-at-me cameo as the limo driver. I get that it can be frustrating to be the director of a world-wide box office smash like¬†Iron Man and still be known as “The Short Guy from Swingers,” but no one gets a free pass. And unless you’re Leonard Nimoy or Kenneth Branagh, you’re better served leaving the acting to the actors.

So, it’s a little late in the review for a “First-of-All” but, first of all,¬†I want to make it clear that I’m a huge fan of the Alamo Drafthouse cinema experience.¬†I love what they do for going to the movies, and¬†I love paying to see movies in their establishments. I saw¬†Iron Man 2 at the West Lakes Alamo Drafthouse in San Antonio, and I’ve never seen a better argument for staying home to watch movies as¬†I did in Theater 8.¬†I love going out to see movies. Next to sorting the songs on my mp3 player into new and exciting song lists (like all the song titles that use an ampersand instead of spelling out ‘and’ or all the songs with a clap track) going to a movie theater to be wowed is my favorite thing in the whole world to do. But the Gateway speakers¬†I plug into my Sony give me more of an impact than what they were calling a sound system. Maybe it’s a small thing to devote a whole paragraph to, but when the emotion is building and the french horns are kicking in with the synthe bass, and it sounds more like I’m watching the trailer on my Dell Inspiron 5100, you can’t expect me to get absorbed into the environment the movie was trying to create.

And here’s where I say that this isn’t a bad movie. I chuckled a few times in a very ho-hum way. While Pepper and Tony talking over each other doesn’t reach the artful dialogue you’ll find in Christian Nyby’s 1951 horror/sci-fi maserpiece¬†The Thing¬†From Another World or the more recent Oscar Winner from Robert Altman, Gosford Park, it is fun to see them try their hand at the Benedick/Beatrice routine. All in all, I can’t say I recommend this to fans of the first, as it lives up to neither the original movie nor the multitude of Burger King¬†T.V. spots. On the other hand, I saw a bad review or two myself before I went to see it, and they didn’t stop me, just like I don’t expect to stop any of you. And if you don’t like it, I won’t even say, “I told you so.” Of course, maybe that’s exactly what I just did…

Recent posts by Zack

• Zack says, "Go see The Avengers." - May 4th, 2012
• Zack's Take on: The Mite Peckish Games - April 12th, 2012
• Sleeper Cell is Late to the Party for: The Woman in Black - March 25th, 2012
• Review: Another Earth (2011) - August 14th, 2011
• Sleeper Cell: Haute Tension (2003) - June 23rd, 2011

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