Despite Eyjafjallajokull causing the shift of the premiere from the (frankly not very glamorous) surroundings of a shopping mall in West London to the El Capitan in Los Angeles, “Iron Man 2” was finally unleashed on the world last night, ahead of its international opening in the next few days (the film’s arriving in the U.S. a week after most of the rest of the world; because the World Cup makes June kind of a movie wasteland in countries that care about soccer, so it’s an attempt to create a bit of room in the release schedule). The first reactions are starting to filter out, and unfortunately they’re not hugely positive.
The most positive, is predictably, Harry Knowles at Ain’t It Cool News, who says that the film “kicks it up several notches across the board” and calls it “comic movie crack.” It’s more or less a flat-out rave, which means it’s at least as good as some of the other films that received equally glowing notices from Knowles, like “Godzilla,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Lovely Bones,” “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” and “xXx.”
Every other review that’s appeared so far seems to be disappointed with the finished product, to varying degrees. HeyUGuys were the first to have a review up, and say that the film just about pulls it off, with the action sequences, Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke coming in for particular praise (there’s no word on the performance of Rourke’s parrot yet…), but they reckon that it’s unevenly paced, and that the film suffers from being too busy. In particular, several scenes apparently serve only to set up “The Avengers,” which the reviewer calls “poorly contrived.” Variety echo many of the same criticisms — calling Favreau’s direction “playful,” but suggesting it pales in comparison to the first movie. Total Film meanwhile, complain that the film’s overly talky, claiming that the director has “defaulted to ‘Swingers'” (to be honest, that actually makes us more optimistic about it).
The Hollywood Reporter are even more negative, starting their review by saying “Everything fun and terrific about ‘Iron Man,’ a mere two years ago, has vanished with its sequel. In its place, ‘Iron Man 2’ has substituted noise, confusion, multiple villains, irrelevant stunts and misguided story lines.” UK paper the Daily Mirror, meanwhile, go even further, giving it 1 out of 5 and calling it “a disaster” and “a travesty – a mind-numbingly dull, chaotic and often unwatchable muddle.” Blog Slashing The Seats, meanwhile, calls it a franchise “strongly in need of a reboot” (something that, quite frankly makes us kind of furious — is this what fanboy culture’s come to, immediately calling for a reboot as soon as the bad reviews come in?).
It’s looking alarmingly like a consensus for what had previously looked a dead cert to be one of the most entertaining movies of the summer. We’re not going to hammer the nails in yet — we’re seeing the movie on Friday, and should have our review up not long after — but it may be time to moderate your expectations.
In semi-related news, “Jonah Hex” is apparently terrible, according to test-screening reviews that have started to file in, most of which compare it to “Wild Wild West”. But you’d figured that one out on your own, hadn’t you?
