Iron Man 3

Unless you've been living under a rock, you already know if you should go to this movie.  If you saw the trailer and went, "Cool, I gotta go," then, yes, you gotta go.  If, on the other hand, the trailer left you cold and wondering when someone will finally make a great film from a John Cheever novel, then skip it and keep waiting for that day that will never come.

So, I won't try to help you decide.  Instead, I'll give you my thoughts on the movie. 

Warning:  spoilers ahead.

Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit and will see it again at some point.  For timing reasons, I had to watch it in 3D, which is rarely my first choice, so next time, I'll try to catch a standard version. 

That said, two major things about it bothered me, so I didn't love it.

First, the good stuff.  The opening act, in which Robert Downey, Jr. angsts and angsts and angsts, is nowhere near as bad as most critics have it being.  It didn't bother me at all.  He's a good enough actor, and I'm enough into the character (from a life of reading the comics), that I found this part more than entertaining enough. 

The rest of the main actors turned in either strong or fun performances. Guy Pearce chewed the scenery in huge, drooling bites, and I'm fine with that. Gywneth Paltrow once again managed to be interesting and even attractive, attributes she has managed to achieve, as far as I'm concerned, only in the Iron Man films.  I will watch Don Cheadle act in anything.

And then there's Ben Kingsley.  That man can flat out act.  In this case, the role called for him to play two very different characters, both of whom needed to chow down on some scripts, and he did so with apparent glee.  As the actor playing the Mandarin, he was such silly fun to watch that I hope for more of him in an extended cut.  

That turn of plot was a very nice touch indeed, by the way, and because I'd avoided any spoilers prior to seeing the film, it was news to me. 

The action sequences, even when they made little sense, were great fun.

The first thing that kept me from loving this movie was the complete lack of rules for the powers of the bad guys.  I didn't miss the line about needing to regulate to stop from exploding in a three-thousand-degree ball of heat, but that wasn't enough to excuse the way Pearce's powers--and Paltrow's--grew and mutated at the end.

The other upsetting factor was the separation of Tony Stark from Iron Man.  The big battle was more Jarvis in multiple suits fighting the enemy than Iron Man facing down a foe.  Worse, the separation of his chest power source from the suits, and the eventual removal of that power source, damaged the man/Iron Man link.  If they make any more Iron Man movies, and I'm not at all sure if they will, I'll be curious to see how they handle this.

Still, as I said, I enjoyed the film and will see it again.