ANY OLD, ANY OLD IRON: Iron Man. So this isn’t really a review. It’s a growl. I wanted something that maybe no Iron Man movie in the foreseeable future can provide.

This is the thing: Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, is a defense contractor who becomes a superhero. That’s an inescapable part of his whole deal. If you make a movie about him, you make a movie about weapons contracting.

So this movie has lots of jaw-jaw about how hurting people is bad, but also fighting Hitler is good, and it’s really just a lot of bafflegab with a level of political philosophy well below the average seventh-grade civics classroom. Iron Man talks out of both sides of its mouth and we’re not even supposed to notice!

But, you know, I adored the filmishness of The Mask of Fu Manchu, a.k.a. “What If Special Effects Hated the Chinese?”

So while I really do think the Iron Man movie is pretty much decapitated by its need to simultaneously respond to and ignore contemporary American realities… I do also think that Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic, really well beyond anything I’d expect; the dialogue is great unless it involves either political philosophy or people dressed in metal suits; Gwyneth Paltrow breaks her streak of annoying the pants off me, by being really lovely in a major role!; Terence Howard is good; it could’ve been more stupid, I reckon maybe; and if you bracket every philosophical thought you’ve ever had, this is a fun movie.

I couldn’t do it, dude. I love the dancer’s grace with which Downey made even throwaway scenes memorable; but as a whole product, this didn’t work for me. I love Tony Stark–and this film made him even more Patsy Stone-ish than usual!–but that wasn’t quite enough.