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May 8-14, 2008
buzz@boulderweekly.com
I am Iron Man
by Michael Phillips
Faux Fey
by Michael Phillips
 I am Iron Man
by Michael Phillips
Surviving his own private Afghanistan hostage drama, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark returns home, as he terms it, “conflicted.” You could say the same about Iron Man, in which a war profiteer develops a conscience, an off-and-on politicized streak and a titanium alloy flying suit, with jets of flame shooting out of his palms.
As big-budget comic book adaptations go, this one’s a gratifying freak — the right kind of conflicted, as well as quick-witted. It’s a lot of fun. The style may be in the performances more than in the film itself, directed by Jon Favreau (Elf, Zathura: A Space Adventure). But Favreau’s picture, rumored to have cost $180 million, doesn’t look, feel or play like a heavy-spirited blockbuster.
Mainly it has Robert Downey Jr. The newly insurable actor, who has had his run-ins with various chemicals in the past, plays this louche playboy with a knowing glint in his eye. You swear you can see that glint even when Stark’s head is stuck inside the red-and-gold helmet with the slits for peepholes. And when he bandies the badinage about with Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Stark’s gal Friday, Virginia “Pepper” Potts, you’re seeing two actors who understand each other completely, who can mine the pulp fictions at hand for both earnestness and laughs. Has there ever been a comic book movie with such high-comic fizz in the dialogue scenes?
The Iron Man, created in 1963 by Stan Lee and company, had some interesting wrinkles: He was an alcoholic as well as a hard-living hedonist who, as originally drawn, looked like a mustachioed Efrem Zimbalist Jr., or a variation on Clark Gable. Downey evokes a different sort of glamour, that of a famously self-destructive hipster fending off middle age as best he can. In the comic book original, Stark fell afoul of a Ho Chi Minh-styled dictator, returning to safety with shrapnel dangerously near his heart and a cylindrical metal canister planted in his chest. (It’s electromagnetic, or non-returnable, or something.) The Vietnam-era Iron Man’s mission was simple: destroy communism, one North Vietnamese at a time.
Times change, wars curdle and film producers must arrange for a new villain. Behold: the Taliban, finally good for something. In the film’s prologue, Stark and his Air Force pal Rhodey (Terrence Howard in a functional role) meet in Afghanistan for a demonstration of Stark Industries’ latest and most fearsome arms. Then comes an ambush, and Stark is captured by cave-dwelling insurgents and forced to create for them a horrible new weapon of mass destruction. Instead, with the help of a fellow prisoner (Shaun Toub), he creates a crude prototype of Iron Man and blasts his way to freedom.
Back in America with the magnetic chest canister keeping him alive, Stark has other battles, including a struggle for the future of Stark Industries waged with a steely colleague played by Jeff Bridges. It’s a kick to see Bridges munching on an adversarial role such as this. Regarding the climactic metal-on-metal smackdown, well, no one (not even 14-year-old boys) will consider it the film’s highlight. It doesn’t impart a Transformers headache. But we’ve seen it before. Favreau is a solid director; what’s missing is a sense of distinction and eccentricity in the big action sequences to augment his facility with actors.
The best scenes keep Stark front and center and riffing on the reluctant-superhero premise. In the sleek, well-appointed garage of his fab Pacific Coast mansion, Stark noodles with his new, improved Iron Man gear. Once he’s airborne, Iron Man recalls the jet-pack days of The Rocketeer (a tasty film, though a big flop). What The Rocketeer lacked in star power, Iron Man has in spades. When Stark mutters lines of self-realization such as “I could... actually do some good,” Downey finds just the right spin. He’s like Tobey Maguire in the first two Spider-Man pictures: an unlikely casting choice, but the only correct one in retrospect.
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Faux Fey
by Michael Phillips
Tina Fey enjoys the career every sharp-witted writer-performer in America, female or male, dreams of having. She’s a paragon of nerd-babe wit and wisdom, sharp-edged but with an appealing undercurrent of reticence. (Part of her always seems to want to get behind the camera and watch someone else do whatever scene she’s doing.) Fey headlines a self-created hit sitcom (30 Rock); she made an impact on national politics with her recent, exquisitely timed morale boost to Hillary Clinton supporters across the nation; she graces magazine cover after cover; and she hawks for American Express. She’s everywhere, and she’s good at every one of her jobs.
The new film Baby Mama showcases Fey opposite a fellow Saturday Night Live cast member — trained comic actress, Amy Poehler. The prospect of seeing a mainstream commercial comedy built around these two sounds tasty enough. Their stylistic differences hold promise as well. And for a while, despite the hacky ’70s-sitcom technique behind the camera and in the editing room, I went with it. The performers include genial Greg Kinnear (who plays Fey’s love interest) and Steve Martin, who plays Fey’s eccentric, pony-tailed boss. The way Martin utters the phrase “amazing salmon,” well, it’s very nearly nine bucks’ worth.
Midway through, though, I started wondering why I wasn’t laughing more. Baby Mama was not written by Fey and/or Poehler, which may be the reason. The film was written and directed by Fey’s former SNL cohort Michael McCullers, who may well be a jokesmith, but retorts such as “Where did you read that — the Weekly World Dum-Dum?” barely qualify as jokes. As a first-time director he has yet to develop a whisper of visual style or strategy. Fey and Poehler no doubt had a hand in shaping the material, and they’re as engaged as possible. But baby formula is baby formula.
Unable to conceive on her own despite copious Post-It notes to herself (“Yes! Be fertile!”), Fey’s Kate Holbrook hooks up with a pricey surrogacy center run by an imperious blueblood (Sigourney Weaver). One hundred thousand dollars later, Kate scores her “baby mama” in Angie (Poehler), pure white trash with an ill-defined New Age streak (talk about moldy jokes) and a common-law husband played by Dax Shepard. The Kate/Angie relationship develops as one-half Felix and Oscar, one-half Thelma and Louise. Kate patronizes the working-class lout Angie endlessly, but you know the latest reconciliation is around the corner. One minute Kate and Angie are at each other’s throats; the next, they’re doing karaoke and bonding.
Kate’s an executive at a Whole Foods-type organic foods grocery chain. This is a milieu begging to be satirized.
Every moment of this project feels beat-driven, focus-grouped and designed to package Fey as a viable movie star with great pins (as one character takes pains to note) to go with the breasts (ditto). This isn’t writing, it’s advertising. Poehler’s character is a random collection of disparate quirks, and while Poehler has her moments, her energy is all about sketch-comedy attack. The film probably will find a wide audience, because people like Fey, and it’s going for likable rather than side-splitting. Still, a line from Mean Girls (which Fey wrote) kept nagging at me. “You don’t have to dumb yourself down to get guys to like you,” Fey reminded Lindsay Lohan. Substitute “a mass-market film audience” for “guys,” and you have an apt reminder for Fey and her collaborators.
—MCT
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