Robert Downey, jr is Tony Stark, a world-renowned weapons maker who's playboy prowess reeled in all twelve of one year's Playmates. His fancy world of fast cars and expensive booze is blown to bits when a convoy toting him through Afghanistan is hijacked by a group of rogue paramilitary types. As a hostage Stark figures out two things: 1) He must figure out a way to escape and 2) Upon finding his captors are using his company's weapons, put an end to the backdoor dealings of Stark brand ordinance. Iron Man provides a solution to both those quandaries. While a hostage the bad guys ask him to build his latest and greatest weaponry. Instead, he builds himself into a big metal dude. That might be an important lesson to the world's bad guys, try not to give your hostages access to the raw materials for your own doom.

Once Stark gets back to America we're introduced to a sprawling cast of stars. Jeff Bridges is Stark's business partner. Gwyneth Paltrow is his assistant. Jon Favreau, of Swinger's fame, directs this movie and he gives himself a spot as Stark's chauffer. You'll also recognize Terrence Howard of Hustle & Flow playing Jim Rhodes, Stark's friend and military liaison. Something else you'll discover is that after Transformers, it's really darn hard to make robots look near as cool. Without Downey's wit and all-round charm to carry the movie, the climactic Battlebot scene falls somewhere between Saturday morning cartoons and Robocop. But this movie is just a primer, it's the beginning of what Marvel hopes will be several in a successful series. Holding the cast together will be vital, especially Paltrow and Downey, jr, but the big job will be keeping up with today's blockbuster superhero movies. If I were Favreau I would have saved a dollar or two hundred million by jotting down some good one-liners in a notepad until he had enough for another brain pleasing Swingers-type flick.

Beware: There seems to be a struggle with chronology here. For example, there are two kinds of movies. There are the action flicks in which you want big battle scenes and not tedious stories. Those movies start with about a minute of back story, typically of some little boy's parents being brutally murdered, and then we jump to "thirty years later" and the little boy is all grown up, living in a lavish cave and able to blink and shoot missiles. We don't care how, he just does because he's mad about his parents. And then there are the movies that feature some old man driving a lawn mower across Iowa or a hippy kid getting lost in Alaska. Those movies are all about the details. They are actual stories. Iron Man should be the former, but sometimes gets tangled in the latter.

Who Will Like this: You and me and everybody with dreams of surprising bullies, credit card collectors, tardy contractors or ________(fill in blank) with a giant robot suit.

Secret to Better Enjoyment: Look for The Hef.

Get your FREE Pre-approval now with MyREALTY Mortgage at 866 664 7432!