Now on DVD: Robert Downey Jr. and Jason Segel are Stark, naked

Iron Man
Review by Nathan Weinbender

“Iron Man,” based on the long-running Marvel comic book series, is a very good superhero film, and the key to its success is the ever-dependable Robert Downey Jr. Yes, the movie’s special effects are impressive. Yes, the action sequences are thrilling. Yes, it features a foreboding villain, a pretty girl, a devastating crisis of worldwide proportions that needs to be remedied in the course of two hours.

“Iron Man” is everything you’d expect it to be—a loud, fast-moving action-adventure spectacle—but at the core of the film is Downey, who is cool, collected and meditative, and whose performance is almost better than the movie requires.

He plays Tony Stark, the CEO of a billion-dollar weapons manufacturing company that was instituted by his father. He’s a boozer and a notorious ladies man—his private jet has a full bar and pole-dancing flight attendants—as well as a prodigious electrician and programmer (we’re told he built his first computer mainframe when he was six).

When he travels to Afghanistan for a demonstration of a stealth missile, Stark’s Army escorts are attacked and he’s kidnapped by terrorists who order him to build them his latest weapons system. Instead, Stark constructs a nearly indestructible suit of armor, which he uses to escape.

Now he’s Iron Man, and when he returns home he perfects the suit and dedicates himself to stopping the warfare from which he once profited. Stark’s personality transformation from purveyor of destruction to protector of peace is actually believable, mostly because Downey keeps the character grounded in reality.

Nobody has ever played a superhero the way Downey does here: His smarmy, off-the-cuff delivery is nothing new, but it’s made refreshing when viewed within the context of this role. Few actors can convey good-natured cynicism quite the way he can—it’s a genius casting decision.

Despite his standout performance, Downey doesn’t really chew the scenery, and he allows the supporting actors to make an impression as well. Gwyneth Paltrow is surprisingly good as Stark’s personal assistant Pepper Potts, and she and Downey have a snappy chemistry that’s racked with sexual tension.

A hardly-recognizable Jeff Bridges plays Obadiah Stone, the staunch second-in-command at Stark Industries, who resents Tony’s decision to cease manufacturing weapons and, quite inevitably, becomes the film’s villain.

Terrence Howard, as Air Force colonel James Rhodes, isn’t given enough to do, but, based on the character’s history in the comics, he’s bound to have a bigger role if the film develops into a franchise.

Tony Stark is a dynamic character, flawed but engaging, and Downey and director Jon Favreau could work wonders with him in whatever sequels are to follow. “Iron Man” doesn’t have the originality and spirit of the early “Superman” films or the pathos of the first two “Spider-Man” pictures, but it works on its own terms as pure special effects-driven entertainment.

Grade: B+

Directed by Jon Favreau. Written by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. Starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb and Shaun Toub. PG-13; 126m.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Review by Nathan Weinbender

What I appreciate most about the films of Judd Apatow—and those of his many subsidiaries—is that they are, above all else, endearing. It’s a quality that is missing from so many modern comedies, which are crass and mean-spirited all the way through before tacking on manufactured sentimentality at the end.

“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” which Apatow produced, is effortlessly endearing. It’s funny, yes, and although it’s hard to be funny, it’s even harder, I think, to make a sweet, good-natured film that never feels artificial or cloying.

It has been written by its star, Jason Segel, who has the looks of an average Joe but the appeal and charisma of a major movie star. He plays Peter Bretter, a struggling musician who scores a popular crime show that stars his actress girlfriend, Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell).

When Sarah breaks up with Peter after a six-year relationship, Peter is devastated, and he escapes to a Hawaiian resort in an attempt to keep his mind off his romantic troubles. Unfortunately, in a coincidence that could only exist within the confines of a screenplay, Sarah and her new boyfriend, British pop sensation Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), just happen to be staying in the same hotel.

Segel plays the role of the brokenhearted loser with great conviction and aplomb—like Steve Carell and Seth Rogen before him, he's perfectly cast as the lovable schlub. Mila Kunis is surprisingly good in the thankless role of the pretty hotel desk clerk who falls for Peter, and Russell Brand, as Sarah’s preening goon of a boyfriend, brings a droll sensibility to his vacuous character, and he walks away with some of the movie's best one-liners.

The basic premise follows the groundwork set by all Apatow-related romantic comedies: Down-to-earth guy is unlucky in love, ends up in a relationship with an enchanting girl who is way out of his league, finds himself in a predicament where his relationship is put in jeopardy, everything turns out okay in the end.

But in the case of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (and it was true of both “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up”), it’s not the film’s premise that makes it memorable but its colorful characters.

Grade: B+

Directed by Nicholas Stoller. Written by Jason Segel. Starring Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, Bill Hader and Jonah Hill. R; 112m.

Welcome to the jungle

Tropic Thunder
Review by Nathan Weinbender

You’ve no doubt heard the horror stories from the set of “Apocalypse Now.” Francis Ford Coppola’s epic about the horrors of war is one of the greatest American movies ever made, but he had a hell of a time getting it finished—star Martin Sheen nearly died of a heart attack, a typhoon destroyed the sets and filming rambled on for over two years as the budget ballooned uncontrollably.

Coppola himself suffered a nervous breakdown and threatened to commit suicide before the movie was completed. As he famously said of the production, “We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane.”

“Tropic Thunder” is about the making of a film not dissimilar to “Apocalypse Now” (or “Platoon” or “The Deer Hunter,” for that matter), but what happens to the actors and director in this movie make the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the Coppola picture look like a walk in the park.

The temperamental director, played by Steve Coogan, is fed up with the pretensions of his actors and decides to abandon them in the jungle. In hopes of lending his Vietnam War film an air of realism, he sets up a series of hidden cameras to capture their every move. Unexpectedly, though, he ceases to be in the film’s funniest sight gag, and the actors end up battling a gang of drug smugglers led by a ten-year-old boy.

Of course, the self-absorbed actors are slow to realize that’s what going on around them is real and not a product of Hollywood hokum. Ben Stiller (who directed and co-wrote this film) is Tugg Speedman, the chucklehead action hero from the hit “Scorcher” series; Jack Black plays a heroin-addicted comedian named Jeff Portnoy, whose flatulent routines would make a gastroenterolist cringe. And Robert Downey Jr. is Kirk Lazarus, a lauded Australian method actor who has undergone a pigmentation process that allows him to convincingly play a hard-edged African American soldier.

Now, you may have heard that “Tropic Thunder” has stirred up controversy with advocacy groups across the country, and you probably thought it was due to Downey’s appearance in a more sophisticated form of blackface. No, the hullabaloo has been generated by a very minor element in the film, which involves Stiller’s character playing a mentally challenged man in a film called “Simple Jack.”

In one sequence, Stiller laments being overlooked for awards for playing such a demanding role, and Downey explains to him that his mistake was in “going full-on retard.” Remember Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” or Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump?” Well, they won the Oscar, he says, because they played characters that were only “half-retard.”

It’s the use of the “R-word” that has people up in arms, and, on a basic level, I guess I can’t blame them. It’s a hateful, narrow-minded term, but the characters in “Tropic Thunder” that use it are hateful, narrow-minded people, and the word functions more as an illustration of their ignorance than it does as a joke. The Simple Jack character himself is not meant as an attack on mentally challenged people, but rather as an attack on actors who exploit people with disabilities in order to win acclaim.

Lazarus, the Downey Jr. character, serves the same purpose: How ironic that Hollywood would hire a white actor to play a black man when there are dozens of competent black actors working in Hollywood. And isn’t it strange how far some actors will go to completely immerse themselves in a role? It reminds me of Laurence Olivier’s advice to Dustin Hoffman, who, for a scene in “Marathon Man,” stayed up all night to appear physically exhausted on-camera: “Why not try acting? It’s much easier.”

But I suppose I’ve been tiptoeing around the real issue: Is “Tropic Thunder” funny? Yes, to a point. It has some truly big, inspired laughs in it, but there’s a lot of empty space in between them. This movie also has the same problem as last week’s “Pineapple Express”—the comedic material is mostly on-target, but the action material, which is much less interesting, eventually overtakes the film.

The picture works best, though, as a satire, a clever condemnation of common Hollywood practices that goes straight for the jugular. Movies like “Tropic Thunder” are what we call Equal Opportunity Offenders. It’s brash, crude, foul-mouthed and distasteful, and it gets its jollies from poking nearly every ethnicity and minority in the ribs with demented zeal. See, if you’re offending everybody at the same time, you won’t offend anybody at all.

Note: The movie’s biggest laughs come at the very beginning, opening with fake trailers, ala “Grindhouse,” that advertise the newest projects from the fake actors in the film. The funniest of the bunch is called “Satan’s Alley,” a sexually-charged melodrama about a homosexual relationship between two monks. Alert the Catholic League!

Grade: B

Directed by Ben Stiller. Written by Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen. Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Jay Baruchel, Brandon T. Jones, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, Matthew McConaughey and Tom Cruise. R; 107m.