Iron Man 2–The Worst Movie of the Summer

Am I exagerating?  No.  I am middle-aged and I am sick of sitting through bad films.  There I was sitting at a UA Theater in Los Angeles having paid $8.50 for a matinee feature and I get macho male blow ’em up schlock.  Let’s just dispense with the plot why don’t we as long as we can just blow something up?

I guess it is okay to expect a blockbuster to be followed by a flop.  Lazy writers and lazy directors who understand that they will simply get paid for getting out of bed as long as they make a movie on the coattails of a block-buster.

Robert Downey, Junior should really be getting tired of playing the drug addicted playboy or the drug addicted detective sorely in need of rehab.  It’s getting old and becoming a cliche.  I say move on, brother.

And speaking of brothers, are we not supposed to notice that Don Cheadle and Terrence Howard got swapped out while playing the same character? Take s0me poetic licence writers and change the name of the character because, folks, we don’t all look alike.

I am tired of watching Gweneth Paltrow play an airhead.  Well okay, this time she was an hysterical airhead.  But high-pitched babble does not dialogue make.  You know, since she got the Accidental Oscar a few years ago, she seems to think she can act.  Or maybe she has realized she can’t act, got lucky and is now just along for the ride.  I cannot figure that one out. Robert Downey, Junior and Don Cheadle who did little more than carp at each other didn’t do much better in the dialogue department.  Note to Hollywood, bitchey is sooooo not in.  Everyone just needs to go back and rewatch “Freebie and the Bean” to see how it’s done.

This movie was so bad that they wasted a great bad guy, Micky Rourke, who has truly become scary in middle age.  Hopefully he got paid well, because this movie will do nothing to move his resurging career forward.  Since the writer was hell-bent on not working and the director was hell-bent on having an excuse to blow things up, anyone could have stepped into Rourke’s role, shoved more metal in his mouth than the most jacked up gangsta rapper,  mumbled a few words in Russian and given Iron Man an excuse to sober up and blow lots of things up all for the common defense.

Am I mad about the $8.50?  Nah…I am just wondering why we don’t get to expect quality for that $8.50.  If quality happens in sequels, it happens more by accident than by design.  Peter Jackson is THE notable exception.  If I had my copies of the LOTR Trilogy with me, I’d plop them in right now to wash the memory of last night’s debacle right out of my mind.

My youthful Saturday Mornings were spent watching the super heroes.  Instead of being transported back in time, I sat trapped in my seat praying for a mistake to end.  The Avengers are on tap for 2012. The Avengers has been plugged at the end both Iron Mans and The Hulk.  After Hulk and Iron Man I I was hopeful that it would be a great super hero movie.  Now…not so much.

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