Thanks to Larry, from our sister site, Crazy Kids Chicago, for this review.

Having enjoyed Iron Man 1 immensely, we just had to go see Iron Man 2 in the first weekend.  With over $100 million in the first weekend, we weren’t the only ones who thought about it.  Some of the the cast is back including Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper, Jon Favreau as the body guard, and Robert Downey, Jr as Tony Stark/Iron Man.  They ditched Terrance Howard as Rhodey for Don Cheadle, brought in Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow, Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury, and Mickey Rourke as the bad guy.

First, the plot, well, the plot is kind of all over the place.  The movie has about 6 sub plots:  the energy that keeps Tony Stark alive is also poisoning him; Mickey Rourke wants revenge from the Stark family because they stole his father’s inventions; Hamme (Sam Rockwell) is trying to take over Stark Industries as the number 1 weapons supplier; the government wants Stark to turn over Iron Man to the government; Pepper is taking over as CEO of Stark Enterprises; and Nick Fury wants Iron Man to join Shield.  None of these stories actually fit together really well and the movie bounces back and forth between the different story lines.  Jon Favreau (director) said in an interview he was confused as why they had Tony Stark admit he was Iron Man at the end of the first movie.  The confusion continues in Iron Man 2.

However, this is an entertaining movie.  Robert Downey is great as the wise cracking Stark who doesn’t seem to take anything seriously.  His dialogue is very funny and keeps the audience laughing.  Definitely the best non-action scene, is Tony Stark being grilled by a Senate committe about Iron Man.  The Committee leader is Gary Shandling and the back and forth between Downey and Shandling is hysterical.  The action is of course great.

I always think that if they can’t put together a plot, just go crazy on action.  This is not wall to wall action unfortunately, but the fights against Mickey Rourke, Whiplash, are very cool.  And in another scene Don Cheadle, War Machine, fights Iron Man (Iron against Iron) and the hand to hand combat between the two iron men is really cool.  Scarlett’s Black Widow action scene is really cool but fleeting.  Mickey Rourke is just a gross bad guy who plays the part well.  He wields an energy whip that cuts through everything but Iron Man’s suite so the fights are pretty intense, repulsor blasts against laser whips.

So I was really confused walking out of the theater.  I was definitely entertained but really can’t call this a great movie like the first one.  It was definitely not as bad as a flop as the second James Bond with Daniel Craig but they missed an important opportunity.  It is PG-13 but it was really just comic book violence, no swearing, and not a difficult story to follow.  You should see this in the theater with really great sound because of the flying and explosions are immense.  And if you are really into the comic book, Marvel is doing some really cool things getting the Avengers together and tying the Hulk (Robert Downey was at the end of the last Hulk), Spiderman, Iron Man, and the soon to be Thor and Captain America movies together.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 12:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. If you use RSS, you can subscribe to the RSS feed , or if you would rather receive an e-mail, please subscribe to the e-mail in the lower right hand corner of this page. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.