Deathly dull

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2015)

It looks nice and there are some nice ideas but the script is deathly dull and the film is incredibly slow. Robert Downey, Jr. is as great as ever, Guy Pearce is good fun as Aldrich Killian and Ben Kingsley is quite good as the Mandarin in the second half of the film but the rest of the main cast is forgettable. Gwyneth Paltrow is a good actress but the character of Pepper Potts has even less of a personality than in the first two films. Harley is incredibly annoying. Why they thought that the film needed an annoying kid sidekick is beyond me. My favourite line is Tony's description of Trevor Slattery as "Sir Laurence Oblivier." The dialogue in the second half is generally wittier, on the bright side. The barrel of monkeys scene is certainly the best.
Coincidentally, both Downey and Kingsley played the title character of biopics directed by Richard Attenborough. Sadly, this film's director Shane Black is no Attenborough. It's not even anywhere near as good as Jon Favreau, whom I wish had returned as the director on this occasion. This was generally better received than "Iron Man 2" but I thought that film was considerably better. Honestly, I was so bored that I was waiting for Stan Lee's cameo for half the film in much the same way as I waited for Michael G. Wilson's cameo in "Quantum of Solace". That's...never really a good sign. There is some doubt as to whether there will be an "Iron Man 4". If there isn't one, I can live with that since I found that the films abide by the law of diminishing returns. The film did get one thing right though: War Machine is a much better name than Iron Patriot.