Iron Man 2

'Iron Man' of the people: Superhero sequel at its best when the stars are having a ball instead of a brawl

May 07, 2010|Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

Robert Downey Jr. looks as hung over in “Iron Man 2’’ as he seemed drunk in “Iron Man.’’ He does his share of drinking this time, too. And the sequel makes more out of his insobriety. It has an early stretch where it fizzes and slurs, with the stars stepping on each other’s lines and feet. The movie feels drunk, too.

Downey’s billionaire military-industrialist slut, Tony Stark, slams down into his own expo (for both peace and state-of-the-art weaponry) as his ironclad superhero self. The elemental casing falls away, revealing a handsome pinstripe suit. Tony pats himself on the back for saving the world (“I’ve privatized peace,’’ he brags), praises the scantily clad entertainment (hey everybody, it’s the “Iron Man 2’’ dancers), then finds himself served with a subpoena to testify at a Senate committee hearing, where the movie begins its improvement of the flagging after-party atmosphere of the first movie.

I’m almost certain this is the first time C-SPAN and summer blockbuster have met. In any case, Tony slouches before a firing squad of congressmen, chiefly a simpering Senator Garry Shandling. They want to take over the Iron Man technology. It could be a threat to national security. What if our enemies use it to destroy us? Experts testify — Stark’s friend, Lieutenant Colonel James “Rhodey’’ Rhodes (Don Cheadle), and his cocky competitor, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell). But Stark rolls his eyes and cracks jokes while his personal assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), gives him sour looks from the gallery. The series continues to operate in an arms-race universe parallel to our own, which is a nifty conceit that, in this sequence, produces comical home-video footage of bad Iron Man clones from North Korea, Iran, and Hammer’s company.

At this point we’re about 20 minutes in, and you can’t help but notice that “Iron Man 2’’ is a well-oiled entertainment despite the fact that nothing blows up. This is doubly true a few scenes later, when the movie descends on Monte Carlo for a grand prix race and Downey, Paltrow, and Rockwell seem to really enjoy talking over each other, half-swallowing their put-downs. These scenes have the glamour and wit (however minimal it is) of classic screwball comedy, which becomes a problem later on when the effervescence flattens and a plot takes over.