If I'd wanted to see a comedy film I would have watched The Hangover...

Rating: 1/10 (8 September 2013)

How does this film have positive reviews??!?!?
Remember that moment in Terminator 3 when Arnie puts on the comedy sunglasses and you thought "this movie's going to be a lot more stupid than the last two movies"? Well this whole film is full of meaningless comedy sequences put in there for cheap laughs. It seems that the director, Shane Black, is more comfortable with comedy than pacing an action movie and stringing a plot together. How Marvel let a guy that wrote Lethal Weapon 25ish years ago direct this film I'll never know. I can only assume that Jon Favreau wanted to take a break and just appear as a character, but this film is much the worse for his absence behind the cameras.
The Mandarin character is totally destroyed by Black. First he appears as an anti-America terrorist with Sir Ben Kingsley looking like he could be an Al-Qaeda leader but, confusingly, using a voice that sound distinctly American. Him turning out to be merely a comedy persona takes away any last chance that this film had of achieving any kind of greatness.
Other franchises like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man have all introduced stories where the main character loses their powers and Black tried to do this by destroying Tony Stark's home and workshop but, after a long struggle to repair his remaining suit, it turns out that he actually has an arsenal of Iron Man suits in another cellar. To make things even more ridiculous, Stark blows up all his suits at the end of the film for no apparent reason. Ridiculous.
This film should be deleted from the catalogue of Marvel and Robert Downey Junior. Hopefully it's not a sign of things to come from the franchise.