There's a turd in the punch bowl!!...

Rating: 1/10 (10 May 2010)

Repeat: There's a turd in the punch bowl!
This movie is a microcosm of everything wrong with Hollywood...and, unfortunately, humans in general.
You see, in the most basic terms possible...people are, for the most part, stupid. There are far more of these stupid people on Earth than intelligent ones. So, if you want to sell something to these people, like a movie, you need to dial-down the intelligence level of the product. (In this way, Iron Man 2 succeeds!) For instance, let's say you want to sell a product to a group of Sarah-Palin-backing Tea Baggers. You already know, without ever meeting any of them, that this a group of people who supports a brainless political creation, one who doesn't even belong to the Tea Bagger party! (High intelligence there, eh?!) So if you were to invent a t-shirt with a saying on it, with the intention of selling it to a Tea Bagger...would you create an articulate, detailed argument on the t-shirt...or would you create something that appeals to the lowest common denominator? Would your t-shirt say something smart and factual like "90% of Tea Baggers got a tax cut under Obama!". Or would you just put Obama on the shirt with a Hitler mustache?! Which one is going to sell better? Same thing here with "Iron Man 2". A producer COULD spend $200 Million on something highly intelligent and with some redeeming value -- and sell less tickets -- or that same producer could spend the $200 Million on a bunch of special effects, A-list stars and explosions -- and sell more tickets. So, intelligent people (I'm assuming if you have read this much, you're probably more intelligent than most), we get stuck with these sorry excuses for movies all the time! And I, for one, am sick of it!
Where does Iron Man 2 go wrong? Where to begin?! First off, Mickey Rourke looks like a feminine version of "Professor Chaos"! Where did they come up with that suit design, the Johnny Weir collection?! And Gwyneth Paltrow? How does she keep getting work?! She's the "Mark Harmon" of actresses! In one scene, she seductively kisses the Iron Man mask -- with no human in it! (Imagine her horror when she read the script for the first time and came across that scene!) I almost felt bad for her...then I reminded myself that she is Gwyneth Paltrow! Next in line for this money-grab excuse of a movie is the usually brilliant Robert Downey Jr. If his performance were any more wooden, his nose would grow when he lied!!
In my opinion, there has only been one Comic Book movie worthy of a "10" rating and that was "Batman Begins". Iron Man 2 falls woefully short of that standard. A big step back from Iron Man 1 even. Don't let the fancy CGI and big explosions fool you...this is a clunker!
Thank you for reading!
JD