Movie Review: "Iron Man 3"

Synopsis: Tony Stark's past has come back to haunt him.  When he stood up a huge admirer of his on New Year's Eve 1999, Stark had no idea that his one-time fan would become the Mandarin, a ruthless terrorist who uses people as his weapons.  After Stark's house gets decimated and his girlfriend, Pepper Potts, gets kidnapped, he is bound and determined to stop the Mandarin once and for all...but, even all of his technology may not be enough to defeat his one-time biggest fan.
Based on stories from Marvel Comics.

The Good: As usual, the action scenes were excellent.  Robert Downey, Jr., does his usual fabulous job playing Tony Stark, and the rest of the cast also did well.  The film makes a great point about how past mistakes can come back to haunt you; something we need to hear more in this apathetic world!

The Bad: Unfortunately, the makers decided to add too much unnecessary content.  This flick is oversexed; too many women, including Pepper and some random nameless ladies, are seen in not very much clothing.  One scene even shows two women in bed together, and a guy who is just stopped short of climbing in with them.  An illicit relationship between Pepper and Tony is also implied.  Also, the profanity count is higher than many discerning viewers would be comfortable with; between d-words, h-words, and other expletives, alongside euphemisms such as "crap" and "screw it," the language was over the top.

Conclusion: Unless you've totally avoided superhero or action/adventure films over the past decade or so, you've probably seen fight or action sequences that were amazingly done, with CG and the whole nine yards.  While this film has that, and it's great, such scenes are a dime a dozen these days.  What isn't is clean content: movies and TV shows with little or no profanity or sexual content.  Too many flicks decide to "dirty it up" when they don't even need to.  This movie could have gotten "PG-13" without the unnecessary bits; still, the makers decided to push the rating as far as they could...which is just sad.  If you're looking for clean-cut superheroes, I suggest one of the Marvel or DC animated series, such as The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes or Batman: The Animated Series.  Those versions of comic book adventures feature characters I can actually admire, and stories I would want to revisit.

Score: 2/5