Sadly Lacking

Rating: 1/10 (11 November 2010)

Oh dear. The inclusion of all the elements is here - RDJ is great, Scarlet Johannsen is lovely, fast cars, it's there, just that there's nothing to tie it all together.
The right things in awful proportions makes this a very disappointing film. The cast is great, don't get me wrong, but they need to just *do* more.
I wanted to watch an Iron Man film. I don't want to hear about Stark's daddy issues, or go into great detail about his health problems. I wanted an Iron Man film - a cool suit of powered armour against powerful enemies with loads of action, adventure and fun. It's telling the suit doesn't make a decent appearance until right near the very end for the short, confused and anticlimactic fight we were sitting through we were waiting for.
We spend most of the film moping about Stark's personal issues and the action is almost entirely forgotten about until someone clearly realized it was *supposed* to be an action film and tacked something on the end.
Any time an action film turns to "resolving daddy issues" as a plot device (I'm looking at you, "The Mummy 3: Curse of the Dragon Emperor"), it's fallen far far from the place it was meant to be.
By the time the big finale did come about it was way too short, but by that time I was bored as hell and didn't really care any more. Boring. Just boring.