Iron Man

I went to see "Iron Man" tonight. This is a fact of which I'm somewhat embarrassed. It was not my choice for film (I wanted to go see "The Fall"), but I did end up having a good time. Not because the film was any good. I enjoyed it only because it was so predictable, and ridiculous. Examples (skip these if you don't want spoilers):

• Opening shot. Camera. Humvee behind camera framed in centre of shot. What is to happen? Oh, right. Boom.


• "Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!" I can only hope this line was written during the writer's strike by a 12 year old, and delivered by Jeff Bridges while drunk.


• Toward the end of the film, I was feeling like something was missing ... then the combatants smashed their way out of a building and into traffic. Lots of smashed up cars. Ah. That's what I was missing.


• Build a reactor. Then place a big red button on it that will cause it to explode. Oversight or planning ahead?

Anyway, I had a good time because the film was so bad that I could laugh. I'm a bit worried though. Because I think the fact that the film was laughable eluded some people. Namely, IMDb (8.2 out 10, #163 best movie of all time) and Rotten Tomatoes (93%). Plus countless other people saying it was an amazing film. What's gone wrong here?

So I'm undoubtedly being a bit pretentious. I admit I have been making a habit of renting art house and foreign films for a while now (most recently "La belle et la bête" by Jean Cocteau). So maybe "Iron Man" was just a bit too much of a shock for me. But really ... "Iron Man" was better than "Bleu"? You have to be kidding me....