Cindy Prascik’s Review of Iron Man 3

Dearest Blog, yesterday I braved the fanboy throngs for Iron Man 3's opening weekend.
Spoiler level here will be mild, nothing you haven't seen in the trailers.

When billionaire Tony Stark's world is torn apart by a terrorist, he sets out to save "the one thing (he) can't live without"...and, you know, maybe the rest of us too.

If one of those realistic movie description sites took on Iron Man 3, its tagline would undoubtedly be "Go big or go home." The movie is in constant competition with itself to be bigger and bigger and BIGGER, to the point it sometimes feels like nothing more than a series of ever-growing explosions. Regular reader(s) will know that's a concept I firmly support, but the runtime's pretty bloated for so much filler.

Robert Downey, Jr. is, as always, magnificent in a role tailor-made for him. The brilliant Don Cheadle is underused 'til the movie's last act, and Guy Pearce is marginally less ridiculous than he was in Lawless. (That's meant as more of a compliment than it sounds.) Gwyneth Paltrow is her usual pasty, unbearable self--why can't all films take a cue from Contagion and kill her off right away??--but my beautiful girl Rebecca Hall more than makes up for it. Oscar winner Ben Kingsley does what he can with what I'll call a curious role.

As mentioned, the action and destruction in Iron Man 3 are HUGE; the digital surround-sound on this one almost necessitates earplugs. The effects are pretty terrific, though, and I daresay the bigger the screen, the better they look. I'm not invested in Iron Man lore, so any affronts to the core fandom would have gone straight over my head. The story's nothing to write home about, but some of the dialogue is amusing enough to showcase Downey's comedic talent. Overall it's pretty entertaining, but the film definitely over-labors some points and would have been a lot better with a half-hour edited out.

Iron Man 3 runs a very unnecessary 135 minutes and is rated PG13 for "sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief suggestive content. Of a possible nine Weasleys, Iron Man 3 earns six.

Until next time...




Well, hellooooooo Iron Man!