Iron Man

For a while there the only Iron Man I knew about was Ghostface Killah, Wu Tang Clan’s loveable lyricist who adopted the alias Tony Starks. Lo* and behold he took the moniker from his favorite comic book hero of the same name. We’ve become inundated with superhero movies over the last several years, and I must admit I enjoy the genre. I think the first Spiderman movie set the bar pretty high, as Hollywood made a marked departure from the cornier superhero movies of the 1980’s (Christopher Reeves’ Superman comes to mind). With that being said, I think Iron Man continues the recent tradition of very good superhero flicks.

Robert Downey Jr. is one of those highly respected, critically acclaimed actors, despite his run-ins with the law and his substance abuse problems. It looks like all that nonsense is a thing of the past and Downey’s got that proverbial swag back. He’s in rare form as Tony Stark, brilliant billionaire weapons developer and ladies’ man extraordinaire. When Stark is taken hostage after traveling to the Middle East to debut a new weapon, he creates “Iron Man” as a means of escape from his cavernous prison. After a series of refinements, Iron Man becomes not only Stark's altar ego, but a highly advanced, sleek weapon in and of himself. I’m not familiar with Iron Man’s bio, so I don’t know if he’ll evolve into the type of hero that saves everyday citizens by foiling bank heists and other such clichéd foolishness, but for the first installment our hero is just focused on making sure his weapons aren’t in the hands of the bad guys.

I must confess that when I look at Robert Downey Jr, I don’t immediately think of him as a superhero, but he did a great job. I guess I didn’t think Tobey Maguire looked like a superhero either, but I’m sure he has everyone sold as Spiderman. My point is that if you’re a good actor first, you can probably successfully portray a superhero or just about anything else. Unless you’re George Clooney in Batman. LOL. Anyway, Iron Man lives up to the hype. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the other highly anticipated comic book movies being released later in the summer: The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight. For now it’s probably the best movie based on a comic book in recent memory. Actually, I expect The Dark Knight to $hit on everything Iron Man stands for, but we’ll see!


*I am a spelling fiend and I hate misspellings. This is not a typo! You don't put a 'w' in "lo" when it is used this way, as an interjection.

Baby Mama

The premise of this movie seemed hilarious. A responsible woman who has unsuccessfully tried to conceive must rely on a surrogate to get the baby she so desperately wants - the only problem is that the woman carrying her child seems to be a child herself.

Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live) is Kate Holbrook, a successful, single executive who put her professional life ahead of the desire to start a family. Now in her late thirties, Kate’s biological clock has become deafening. When she learns that her oddly shaped uterus makes it unlikely that she’ll be a mommy (the scene w/ the GYN who tells her this news is hilarious), she decides to resort to alternative methods. Enter Angie (Amy Poehler, also of SNL) as a surrogate who doesn’t mind renting out her uterus for the right price. It’s funny because Kate and Angie couldn’t be more different from each other. Whereas Kate is straight-laced and “together,” Angie seems to be stuck in a second childhood. There are a couple of good twists that keep the story moving forward, and the movie wasn’t too predictable. It relied heavily on its premise but also showed Kate evolve from a total career woman into one that is more open for love and willing to let her guard down. Kate and Angie made a good yin and yang duo, with great comedic effect.

Of course I have a few quibbles, or else this wouldn’t be life and I wouldn’t be me. There were a couple of little racial jokes that I found rather offensive. That’s not to say that there wasn’t humor in the jokes, but it was the kind of humor that makes people uncomfortable. I’ll admit I’m sensitive to that sort of thing, and I don’t think it’s a reason not to see the movie. I just didn’t appreciate it, particularly because people tend to believe jokes that come from certain people, i.e. if Chris Rock makes a joke about Black people, Whites will probably think there’s a lot of truth there, after all Chris Rock is Black, right? So it must be true. Maybe, maybe not. Getting back to the movie, I have a problem with what I assume to be a White writer making a joke about the Black community and having a Black actor deliver the line, almost as if that will lend credence to the negative stereotype. Alright, I’m off my soapbox!

Go see the movie, it was good and it has a strong supporting cast featuring the likes of Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver (most recently of Vantage Point) and Greg Kinnear (Stuck on You). Over and out.