Paid For By Stark Enterprises

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2008)

Entertaining, but not nearly as good as advertised. Robert Downey Jr. is more fun to watch as Tony Stark than Peter Paker in SpiderMan, or Batman for that matter, if only because he's not the tormented hero struggling with his conscious, he's a billionaire playboy who even when escaping with his life is enjoying building himself a high tech cyborg armor. Pathos is replaced with on screen charisma and witty snappy dialog, and all actors play there parts well here. My only problem was that while Stark get's plenty of screen time, I feel like Iron Man only showed up for the last half hour of the film, which I guess is common enough in this origin stories, but still made the whole thing feel kind of uneven to me. I get the impression if the director, actors, writers stay together for the next film they might have ironed out the bugs. (SPOILER)The next film could be the super-hero jamboree "The Avengers", as indicated by Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, at the end of the credits. And this character might do better in a cross over. Like Spider Man and Batman this film is pretty close to how I always envisioned the character, there's just not enough action and hero screen time here. Still it's a super-hero movie for people who don't necessarily care for them, and that's saying a lot. So enjoyable, not great, but good.