Iron Man 2- 3.5/5

It's been difficult for any of us to turn on our televisions this week without being bombarded by trailers, interviews or Audi ads reminding us that it's nearly time for us to go to the movie theater and watch the continued exploits of our favorite billionaire/inventor/weapons designer/womanizer/superhero Tony Stark. All hype aside, I really quite enjoyed the first film and had high hopes for this second installment. Sadly, leaving the theater I was filled with mixed feelings about this one. Some aspects of the movie were wonderful, others left a bad taste in my mouth.

The movie began wonderfully, picking up where the original left off and providing an appropriate introduction of Mickey Rourke. After a few minutes however, it became clear that this sequel was sadly lacking in one of the areas that made the first movie so enjoyable and that is balance. The first film successfully balanced comedy, serious drama and a dash of cartoonish fun in a way that kept the movie flowing and the audience engaged. The sequel suffered in that area. Each scene was one dimensional that I have to wonder if they had labels like "Drama," "Comedy," and "Useless Filler" right on the page of the script. Additionally, while I'm inclined to cut sci-fi, fantasy and comic book movies extra slack in terms of their realism and scientific errors, this movie still went over the top to the point of me laughing out loud at a moment or two (such as Tony Stark building a supercollider in his basement.)

Tony Stark's antics and cavalier attitude are tweaked and pushed just far enough over the top to become irritating rather than charming. Sam Rockwell's portrayal of Justin Hammer was also grating, causing the character to come off as whiney. I will however give credit to Scarlett Johansson for giving a fantastic performance that in my opinion deserved far more screen time than it got. As far as Lt.Col. Rhodes goes, I was distressed upon hearing that Terrance Howard wouldn't be reprising his role in this sequel, but Don Cheadle was excellent, and in truth, probably better than his predecessor. The rest of the cast performed adequately, with the only other real stand-out performance coming from John Slattery. His presentation of Howard Stark and its not entirely subtle homage to Walt Disney was a fantastic addition to this movie.

Despite all of the flaws mentioned above, Iron Man 2 succeeded in several areas. It was full of entertaining action sequences and had top notch special effects. And while the film failed to find the balance of the first one, the timing was very well done, giving us a chance to get to know the characters at least a little bit before they began trying to kill each other. All in all, I have to say that Iron Man 2 was a solid movie that was plagued by very specific failures in writing and direction. Taking that into account, I give Iron Man 2 a score of 3.5, a solid film that didn't quite live up to its predecessor or my expectations.