Ah-ha! You would think that I would be the type to see this movie on opening weekend, but minor financial issues had prevented me from doing so. So with my paycheck burning a hole in my pocket and a The Best Of Soul Train episode that I hadn’t reviewed yet coming on tv in the middle of the afternoon, I went to an early showing of Iron Man yesterday morning.

(Also in attendance at the showing I went to was a group of 15 or so unaccompanied junior high aged boys who thought it was funny to talk and make lame jokes throughtout the movie. Thankfully, several of the older theater patrons decided to tell them to “shut the fuck up or they will get their asses kicked in the parking lot,” which was effective enough to keep them quiet through the rest of the film. This just goes to show you that large groups of teenagers are just no good for business because they do nothing but annoy the “real” paying customers. Their paltry allowance won’t make up for lost revenue of hard working wage earners.  Also, I thought businesses these days had those sonic devices that produced a high pitched noise that only teens can hear to keep them from hanging out and disturbing the other customers, apparently this movie theater doesn’t have one installed yet.)

Iron Man marks the first time that the movie version of a comic book character was better portrayed than he is in the comic book. Tony Stark is rich, brash, a womanizer, super smart and has all the cool toys to become a superhero. In fact, the only reason he has to becoming a superhero is that of pure selfish motivation: because he’s got the fuckingmoney, damnit! (An aspect of the character which is played down in the comic book in favor of the easier to draw action scenes, I suppose.) Robert Downey Jr is the perfect actor for the lead because he just oozes that sleazy charm needed to pull off the role. Jeff Bridges was also perfectly cast because I always thought he just looked evil. (It’s those squinty eyes of his.)

Of course, being the origin story, this movie covers the long arduous process that Tony Stark goes through to develop the Iron Man battle armor. I understand that most movie goers didn’t grow up reading Iron Man comic books, but couldn’t this long middle section of this over two hour long (!) film could’ve been better served or at least shortened with a simple montage?

And of course, what was the point after spending an hour of film time perfecting the ultimate armor, when the final battle scene uses the stereotypical action movie plot device of under powering the main character for the final battle? That just irked me to no end.

What’s a modern day film without the requisite corporate product placement? I see that Verizon, Audi, LG Phones, Burger King and Dell get prominent treatment in Iron Man. Which is fine, if that’s what you have to do to finance a film in this day and age, but the Dell product placement bothered me because if Tony Stark was so smart as the movie portrayed him to be, he wouldn’t use a Dell, that’s for fucking sure! He would either create his own computer mainframe or use Apple products.

Also I have to commend the person in charge of the soundtrack for putting the original version of “Insitutionalized” by Suicidal Tendacies in the film. That came out of nowhere! Nice to see that the old ST is getting some modern day props. “Suicidal! Suicidal!”

jareddriskill