Iron Man Eats His Spinach

Rating: 5/10 (19 May 2008)

From what I can see of Iron Man, he's different from other superheroes in two respects. First he's quite the vulnerable one and second he's put together with extreme, but very human intelligence. Nobody came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond mortal men. No one got their DNA mixed up with some animal to give them some extra-sapien traits. No Iron Man is put together in a laboratory after a prototype is done while in captivity in a cave.
That's probably both the strength and weakness of this film. Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and most of all Jeff Bridges look like they're having a great old time putting flesh and bone on comic strip characters. I'm glad they enjoyed it, I didn't enjoy it as much as I normally do these kind of films.
Iron Man is updated to today's world situation, but with some Thirties flashbacks because it's an arms dealer who is the chief villain here. Downey is like Bruce Wayne, a multimillionaire heir to an armaments fortune who likes to have a good time as well as work while Bridges minds the company day to day.
But that MIT education did not go for naught as those Afghan terrorists found out. Downey proves as resourceful as B.A. Baracus of the A-Team in developing the Iron Man first to escape captors and then to defeat bad guys. And these bad guys are quite in league.
But while the special effects are nice and the players are having a good time, Iron Man reminded me of a Popeye cartoon. Downey and Bridges looked Popeye and Bluto in the best two out of three falls. All that Downey needed to do was reach for that can of Spinach.
I half expected he would.