Quite watchable if you know what to expect

Rating: 6/10 (1 May 2010)

When I saw first Iron Man back in 08' I was very pleased with the experience. Robert Dwoney Jr was a fresh revelation as a Tony Stark/Iron Man witty,clever,slick pretentious guy with all the money in the world. His relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow's character was full of chemistry and it was joy to see them playing off of each other. Add to this couple of great cgi and sound effects here and there, simple script with plain anti war message, and you have yourself great blockbuster summer flick. This time around, like in majority of sequels we get all the same, but in multiple proportions in different variations, and like in most of the cases there is almost nothing really new here. Downey Jr. is great again, there is no reason of course to improve on that in any way, also we get to see Mickey Rourke as one of the villains, and I'd say that the way he underplays his character, making him very ominous, mysterious man is most intriguing addition to the formula, as we anticipate while watching the movie for him to come up on screen more often. We get also Scarlet Johannson as a sexy counter proposal to Paltrow's character for Tony's affection, Sam Rockwell as Stark's old rival, and even Sam Jackson lands a bigger(yet very cartoonish) part here. Nevertheless the movie feels juvenile, as despite very intense approach from Rourke(who went to Russia for preparation on his part), we see actions that feel like taken out from video game, which will not be very much exciting for anyone above 15 years old mark. When you see Don Cheadle's face(another great actor on the payroll here-taking over Terrence Howard's part)in the Iron Man style suite batteling with Tony Stark dozens of robots, you don't think about how great he was in "Hotel Rwanda", you think Power Rangers.
All in all I've seen worse comic book movies(Wolverine,Daredevil), I've seen better comic book movies sequels(The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2). Iron Man 2 is watchable, just don't expect the unexpected.