“Iron Man” vs. journalists

So, I saw “Iron Man” on Saturday afternoon. The B-level Marvel character made for a fun little movie, mostly due to Robert Downey Jr.’s droll acting.

Three little problems for me:

1) The allegedly tough-as-nails woman journalist from Vanity Fair asks Downey’s character a few skeptical questions, then becomes so charmed she beds him. Then — apparently regaining her skepticism after her one-night stand — she’s back covering his press conference at the end.

Yeeeeeah, that’s how it works. What’s a journalistic bimbo, a jimbo? She’s a jimbo. One without any ethics or common sense or, apparently, a boss. C’mon, that sort of thing only happens when you work in TV and you cover the mayor of L.A.

The next two slay me:

2) In a series of realistic-looking magazine covers about Downey’s character, one for Forbes (I think) has the cover line “Tony Stark Takes Reigns at 21.” Uh, no, he took the reins, as in riding a horse. Sheesh.

3) Later a news crawl on a TV has the redundant phrase “$84 million dollar.” That’s like saying “84 million dollar-dollar.”

Pretty amazing that an army of hundreds, or maybe thousands, labored over this movie, whose budget was a reported $180 million, but when it comes to spelling, they guess.

This is more egregious than in “A Scanner Darkly” when the lead character’s ID spells his city of residence “Anahiem.”

Other than those baffling errors, “Iron Man” isn’t bad. Not great, but not bad. Most importantly on that scorching Saturday, the air conditioning at the AMC 30 gets a rave review.

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