Iron Man Review

I wanted to make a superhero movie called Irony Man. In which our fighter uses words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning (yes thats a cut and paste job) in order to prove how messed up the world is. His nemesis, Alanis Morisette, instead tries to think up more inconveniant, irritating things that wouldn't fool a 9 year old Albanian with a poor grasp of the English language into thinking they were in fact ironic. He eventually wins by beating her to death with the transparent dangling carrots she once sung about thanking the world for. Is that ironic?

But alas Marvel has beaten me to it with its first real studio outing (Not the Alanis thing but we can hope in the sequel). Robert Downey Jr is Tony Stark a millionaire, playboy, inventor with the world at his feet. Bummer for him he gets captured by some towelbonced types who ask him to make a missile for them. The irony being that a big weapons manufacturer finds out that the weapons he uses to protect the world are also the ones that can destroy him so then he builds a bigger weapon to stop the ones he first built but then these are also used against him. Is that ironic?

Anyway all this irony blah blah blah is given to us in a big speech by the bad guy (SPOILER Its the man with the beard, all men with beards are unhinged in some way; see photo above) in the final third so none of this is particularly original or good reviewing. So I'll stop. And instead tell you that Iron Man is an absolute pleasure of a film and easily the most fun you can have at the cinema thus far this year. Its not the best film, 'highbrow' films like There Will be Blood and Diving Bell will struggle to be surpassed in my pretentious world but for 'leave the grey matter at home', 'think like a happy retard' fare you can't do better.

Bob Jr is perfect. Always a star (due to his celebism) and an actor (due to his talent) its rare to find a role where he can be both. With Iron Man he shines with the intensity of a freshly polished suit of hotrod red and gold. Jeff clearly has fun with his role and Gwyneth hasn't been this good since John Doe cut her pretty little head off. With Elf being the best Christmas film since Jimmy contemplated suicide and Swingers being the only film to guarantee a (male) smile after a broken relationship, director/actor John Favreau is quickly becoming one of my most favourite people in the whole wide world.

And I'm still struggling with this irony thing, but I do know that 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife is not ironic, especially if you are trying to slash open your own wrists. Its just annoying.