Not the Marvel the first was

Saw Iron Man 2 today.  Not bad.  Not great, but not bad.

Robert Downey, Jr. and Mickey Rourke both put in excellent performances.  Don Cheadle was fine, but he wasn’t given a whole lot to work with.  It felt like his best lines were cut either out of the script or the film.  Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Pots was whiney and annoying.  Scarlett Johansson’s character was unnecessary and gratuitous, and I say this from the perspective of someone who had a fair amount of gratitude.  Sexy as hell, but a bit pointless.  And her booty was enhanced…again, not that I’m complaining.

Other actors’ performances registered even lower on the Richter scale.  Samuel L. Jackson felt like a cameo the whole way despite having at least twenty lines.  Sam Rockwell (played Tony Stark’s competitor) was annoying and poorly written, being either competent or incompetent as the script required.  Even minor roles (Happy Hogan and Agent Coulson) were cardboard and silly.

The acting simply lacked depth, no thanks to writing that offered depth only to a character or two.  I wonder if there’s a director’s cut with a more complete story.  Effects, at least, were as good as expected; not Avatar but good.

When the first Iron Man came out, I expected an explosion-packed roller coaster ride with some snarky comments and lots of cheese.  What the film delivered was a complex if narcissistic hero in a well-developed story with poor acting y the villain (sorry, Jeff Bridges).  So for the sequel, I expected a more complex story with more personalized character depth and some new toys that go boom.

More toys, check, though not much was made out of them.  Complex story?   Hah!  Not even.  On top of that, every opportunity to explore a character other than Tony Stark was promptly brushed aside in favor of more drunken antics from the protagonist.  Somehow Rourke transcended this and delivered his darkly sinister Russian physicist with some complexity, mostly achieved through facial expression and silence.

So, was it worth it?  I went to a matinee, so sure.  It was better than Transformers 2, nowhere near Avatar or either recent Batman film, beat the pants off both Hulk films, dropped square in the middle of the Spiderman franchise (with better effects than the webslinger), and fell short of my appreciation for the GI Joe film (which I actually liked).  Most importantly, it fell short of the first Iron Man.  It was a typical summer-blockbuster-sequel-type film with a couple standout performances and a little eye candy (don’t forget the sexy US Marshal…who is Kate Mara?).  Little more than that.  But don’t expect too much and you’ll have a fun night at the movies.