Sunday, May 4, 2008

U.S. RDA of Iron Man

Just got back from the theater where I met my U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance of Iron Man.

I have too many hobbies. One of the things I've always thought was cool, but never had much room in my free time and/or budget for was comic books. So I'm not hip to the Iron Man scene like a proper comic book geek would be.

That said, even without a proper foundation in Tony Stark History 101, the movie Iron Man was awesome. The special effects, while critical to the movie, didn't overwhelm the rest of the film, which had plenty of substance, humor, tension, plot (!) and good acting to carry itself respectably as more than a special effects flick. The script didn't pander to the lowest common denominator in the audience, either, IMHO, which was a bonus. I got the feeling that the creators of the Iron Man movie gave us more credit for functioning brain cells than most summer films tend to do. Not that it was highbrow. They just didn't dumb things down and drive plot points in with a piledriver when an artificially intelligent sledgehammer sized fist would do.

The humor appealed to both my funny bone, and my Mister's, which isn't a given. And it had the rest of the theater laughing at all the appropriate moments, too, which also isn't always a given.

I agree with some critics I've read who've said that the score was uninspiring. My Mister disagreed on that point. He did take it well, however, when I said I thought Iron Man was a better film than Transformers, which for the record, I also enjoyed. Maybe it's because Iron Man was more of a "grown up" film -- all things being relative. I can't help but make the comparison, though, because of the nature of the special effects.

I did find a few of the product placements in Iron Man a bit on the obvious side, which is just a bit distracting for me. Only because my brain starts involuntarily playing "spot the product placement" as soon as one leaps off the screen at me, and I can't stop noticing them after that. But promotion of consumer goods is a part of the whole entertainment package now, even more than ever. And if they were too subtle, they wouldn't work as product placements. So I don't have any illusions that they're going to go away any time soon.

No spoilers here. Just stay put for the whole rolling of the credits.

Oh, and one more thing. Some folks have noticed this already, I guess, but apparently I wasn't paying attention. Has Robert Downey Jr. always been dead sexy? Or is that the Tony Stark mystique?

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