Just okay, lots of flaws

Rating: 5/10 (4 May 2013)

I very much enjoyed the first two Iron Man films as well as the Avengers, this one however while it certainly had some fun moments does not rise to the level of the others.
If the film is to be taken as nothing more than a "popcorn flick", then it's short comings are that it is too slow, too long and at points my seven year old complained of being bored.
If it is intended to be more than just a popcorn flick, then the shortcomings would become far more numerous; here are a few things I noticed (I'll do my best not to spoil the movie too much)...
-Tony Stark has some "episodes" throughout the film", where he is sort of shell shocked from his experience in the Avengers, the problem is that it is done almost comically, so it is never taken to be something serious, and worse still has absolutely no pay off.
-For a large part of the movie Tony is without his suit as it is being charged up by his new little protégé. During this time he is desperate to get to the Mandarin before the next imminent attack. Eventually, his suit is fully charged and he re-acquires it, but later we find out that he has an entire army of Iron Man suits he could've hailed at any time, which pretty much makes the entire second act of the film pointless.
-There are two other such moments that quickly come to mind. One is when he is fighting two powerful opponents. The first one almost does him in, but he takes her out with an elaborate explosive he make-shifts on the fly. About two minutes later we find out he actually has a hidden palm blaster hidden on his person he could've used before.
-The next one really bugged me. Aboard Air Force One, Iron Man takes out a baddie who is on top of him using his chest blaster. Towards the end of the film the main bad guy is in virtually the same position above him, and instead of using the blaster that worked so well before, he does pretty much nothing, then tries to fight him with a sword blade that pops out of his suit.
-BIG SPOILERS AHEAD... the revelation of the true nature of the Mandarin will probably infuriate fans of the original comic series (of which I am not), but for me it was simply anti-climactic, and to be honest, not all that "shocking".
-As the film comes to a close, I'll suffice to say it is a tad ambiguous, in that it almost suggests that he is hanging up the Iron Man suit, as it were, and yet in his closing monologue he states that he IS Iron Man. This is actually a bit annoying to me because like everyone, I know there is another Avengers movie up coming, so they are obviously going to have to come up with some kind of contrived situation to get him back into the suit. More than that though, it really robs Tony Stark's character of the kind of cocky, narcissistic attributes that made him so awkwardly endearing in the first place.
To be clear, I didn't hate the film, just noticed that the bad story points really stuck out. There was a really neat scene in which Tony, similar to the first film, has to construct weapons out of odds and ends. I just wish they'd milked this scene a bit more because it could've been a lot cooler than it was.
Personally I wish I had've waited until it showed up on Netflix.