Repulsive

Rating: 1/10 (17 April 2008)

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr in total cruise control) is a weapon manufacturer. While field testing his state-of-the-art armament in Afghanistan he's kidnapped by terrorists and creates a suit of armor to escape. Back in the US, he's suddenly dropping the weapon business, which leads to an escalating feud with his business partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges, hamming it up to compensate his lack of screen time).
You know your movie is in trouble when the guy in charge of selecting the songs for the soundtrack makes more bold and original choices than the writers. You can bet there's a big problem with your script when Marvel's own Bond-like character hardly drinks or hooks up with femmes fatale. But director Jon Favreau ("Made", "Elf, "Zathura") really doesn't give a damn. He's too busy sticking to his comfort zone, watching his actors chew the scenery and improvise campy jokes to realize that what he envisions as an action movie doesn't contain enough action scenes to be considered anything else than a cheesy comedy. What was supposed to be the movie event of this summer is just a 2Hrs shallow running gag. Sad.
There are only two worthy action scenes involving the titular character, and they are either way too short (the climactic fight) or just lazy, CGI-heavy excuses to fill the empty spaces in the script. The fight sequence between Iron Man and the tank, then the Raptor jets is so laughably and obviously meaningless that it makes one wonder what could've been the movie if offered to a director more competent and above all FOCUSED. The whole movie is a mess wandering back and forth between silly gags involving the armor malfunctions, unimaginative action bits or boring and totally unbelievable dramatic moments.
Ramin Djawadi score is laughably bad and sounds like a bad video game music, with cheap keyboards and guitars. The design is derivative and lazy (there are only two real original designs, the other being slight variations) and when the end credits rolled my first thought was to the almost $200 million spent for this train-wreck, and how such a god-awfully expensive project can be so underwhelming eventually. Hopefully this is the only deceptive blockbuster of the holiday season. Too bad it came out first.