I don’t even consider this a great superhero movie. Instead, it’s the great Robert Downey Jr. movie twenty years in the making. Breaking out in 1987 with the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation Less Than Zero, Downey Jr. went on to win an Academy Award nomination in 1992 for his ingenious portrayal of Charlie Chaplin in the Richard Attenborough biopic Chaplin. He stuck around the rest of the 90’s but his career started to go downhill. By the turn of the century, he was in and out of rehab, and essentially insurable by most producers to even be in major motion pictures. Woody Allen wanted him for a film a few years ago, but he wasn’t even allowed to do the movie. Now, he has sobered up, gotten better, and ready for super stardom. After a deliciously entertaining turn in last year’s Zodiac, the awesome David Fincher crime drama, Downey Jr is front and center for all of Iron Man’s running time and deservedly so. This is Downey Jr’s movie, and he is as terrific and unique in this as Johnny Depp was brilliant and different in the first Pirates of the Carribbean movie. Downey Jr. is this film.

I’m typically let down by superhero movies because they pay too much attention on the action and special effects over the story, but the opposite takes place here. Director Jon Favreau, who first came to fame in the 1996 Doug Liman film Swingers, knows a thing or two about storytelling, and he proved his sensibilities for mainstream cinema in the Will Ferrell-starrer Elf. He, unlike so many others, understands that a good superhero movie (especially an origin films) begins and ends with the screenplay. You can have all the CGI mayhem extravaganza you want, but if there’s not a story to support it, there’s next-to-no movie. Iron Man plays it smart every step of the way and allows us to get involved with both the story and characters before any real action takes place (outside of the opening explosion scene). By the time the action begins, we’re into the movie. And there could be no better way to let this film play out.

My only gripe with the whole film is that it takes almost a little too long to get moving (and the last battle sequence is a little blase, but I’m not one to complain too much). All the material with Downey Jr. imprisoned bored me after a little while, but after he breaks out, the movie gets moving, and things start getting interesting. I love the cast that Favreau obtained. Downey Jr will finally, after twenty years, get his big break here (or should I say, he has gotten his big break). In the hands of a more subtle, more subdued actor, this film could’ve been a bore. Instead, he injects the film with the kind of enthusiasm rarely seen in big summer blockbusters. As good as Tobey Maguire, for example, is in the Spider-Man movies, he’s never exactly a fascinating actor to watch. Downey Jr. is unpredictable in a way that makes for exciting viewing. Gwyneth Paltrow, who hasn’t been in a major movie in almost a decade, is a welcome addition to the cast, playing the sassy love interest with zest and verve. She’s not some young whiner hot chick who keeps getting in distress and needs to be saved. Her chemistry with Downey Jr. is wonderful, with the relationship thankfully left ambiguous before the end credits roll. And then there’s Jeff Bridges, who’s always been capable of playing a vicious bad guy, and here he finally gets a role to show just how far he can go. He’s definitely come a long way since the 1993 awful serial killer movie The Vanishing (with Sandra Bullock the only high point, of course).

Iron Man is an unusually strong beginning to the summer movie season, and I’m positive it will be one of the top three mainstream blockbusters of the summer. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian could be disappointing, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I have my doubts about. I’m assuming The Dark Knight may be better, but not much later this summer looks like it will come close to the quality of this film. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I didn’t even expect to like it all that much. I’ve never been much of a superhero movie fan, but this is one of the better ones, for sure the best superhero movie since X-Men 2 five years ago. I’m already looking forward to the sequel.