Iron Man 2 Movie Review

I saw Iron Man 2 opening day with my brother.  I know that it has been a couple of weeks since then and this is a little stale, but I briefly lost my blogging mojo due to external circumstances.  Iron Man returns Sherlock Holmes as the lead and the big girl from Shallow Hal as Pepper Potts.  Introducing that really famous girl that really hasn’t done much but still manages to be famous as Natalie, that famous actor from the 80’s who revitalized his career by being crazy as the bad guy Ivan, and Wild Bill from Green Mile as Tony Stark’s rival.  Also, inexplicably replacing that dude from Crash as Rhodey is Basher from Ocean’s 11.

Expectations:  I initially had very high expectations for Iron Man 2 because I loved the first one so much.  As I was driving to the theater, I was thinking, “Dude, there is no way this is going to be Dark Knight.  So settle down.”  On the other hand, didn’t it have to be better than Batman Returns and Fantastic Four: Silver Surfer?  By the time I got there, I was thinking Spiderman II, good not great.

Reality: It was much, much better than Spiderman II but of course, no Dark Knight.  Robert Downey was incredible again. Mickey Rourke, who I suspect might not have been acting, was great as a crazy villain.  Scarlett Johannsen (not going to check spelling so leave it alone) and Gwenyth Paltrow (again) were not as wet-blankety as sometimes the female leads can be in hero movies.  There was great action and a plot that was not as convoluted as most superhero sequels can be.  Great blend of humor and action.  Did I mention that I saw it on the Imax?  Everything is cooler on Imax.  (Sidenote: now that my wife is hooked on the sparkly vampire books, do you think that they could please make one of these movies for Imax and/or 3D? That would really help me out.  Thx.)

Appropriateness:  Superhero violence that never is too bad.  It’s mostly beating up robots, but there is some blodd ‘n stuff.  Tony Stark’s character is still a cad, and so there is much innuendo, bikini ladies, etc.  My nine year old who loves superhero movies will not be allowed to see it yet.  She is still mad at me that I haven’t let her see the first one.  Of all the superhero franchises, this is the least kid friendly, IMNSHO (In my not so humble opinion)

Rating: (Here is the system)

See it in the theater and will definitely own

See it in the theater and might own

See it in the theater and will likely rent it

See it in the theater and be done

See it at the dollar theater

Rent it

Avoid it.

I rate it a see it in the theater and definitely own it.

Sherlock Holmes

I do not watch many movies in the theater, so do not expect this too often.  The ones I do see are guy movies that are cool visually that make it worth it to see on the big screen.  I am a guy who likes to own movies and for the price of two people going to see a movie when it’s new, you could own it.  So I go to see movies in the dollar theater or rent them and then decide if I want to own them.  I say all that because I will not do many movie reviews.  If I did, it would be for movies you saw 3 months earlier, and I’m not sure that would be helpful or entertaining.  Also, I am not the kind of person who will ever give spoilers, so if anything my reviews will seem incomplete.

So I saw Sherlock Holmes today with my wife, brother and mom.  Sherlock Holmes has Iron Man as the lead and also stars that weird playboy robot from A.I. and that girl from the Notebook.

Expectations:  It has Robert Downey as the lead so that means Holmes will be a little edgier and more of a cad than what he normally has been portrayed.  They will have British accents, so I will miss a lot of the dialog, and I will be wishing there were subtitles.  I think it will be very intelligent and have a lot of action.  It is going to be good not great.

Reality: Robert Downey was incredible as was Jude Law.  The spin that they gave those two classic characters were great.  The way they interact with each other is both clever and funny.  The Rachel McAdams character was. ..zzzzzz.  I didn’t care and I found it hard to believe that she was some sort of challenger/foil to Holmes.

The action was exciting and the plot was very smart, but without being hard to follow.  (My barometer for this is Heidi.  This was what I call a 1 “what?” movie.  A “what?” is the number of times Heidi leans over and asks, “what?”)  Any movie that my mom, wife, brother and I all enjoy has to be working on a lot of different levels.  I like great plot twists.  There are no huge plot twists, but zigs and zags enough to make it quite interesting.  There were no “Dude!!” moments which is something that is so awesome that I will shout that out in the theater or at least in my heart.  However, it was consistently entertaining and I never lost interest.  I never messed around on my phone, which is quite rare.

Appropriateness:  There was no profanity that I can recall.  There was almost no sexuality in it at all.  If you have seen the preview of him mostly naked and chained to a bed, that’s a small part of the movie and not what you think.  There is violence and some grossness, namely some pig carcass slaughter that made me laugh and freaked my mom out.

Rating: (Here is the system)

See it in the theater and will definitely own

See it in the theater and might own

See it in the theater and will likely rent it

See it in the theater and be done

See it at the dollar theater

Rent it

Avoid it.

I rate it a see it in the theater and might own it.

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