I really liked the first two Iron Man films. They were flashy, techy, exciting and even funny at times. With Robert Downey Junior in the title role, the producers had the perfect fit for not only the Iron Man but also the wise-cracking playboy millionaire inventor behind the mask.

This third outing though is a big let down. The plot is a mess, with Guy Pearce hamming it up as a sort of meta-human Terminator 2, out to humiliate the U.S. via the kidnap of their president, using another super-villain The Mandarin as the medium to initially spread fear and panic amongst the general public with various Bin Laden type terrorist actions. Unfortunately for America and naturally the free world, Iron Man is between costumes and not operating at full strength so that even with the assistance of the similarly-powered War Machine / Iron Patriot, he's pushed to his limits in the expected mayhem-inducing final battle between the two.

So what has gone wrong? For one thing Iron Man doesn't appear in armour very much in the film (although his previous prototypes come to the rescue by the end) - I don't know, maybe Downie Junior wanted more face-time on screen. The suit-on, suit-off routine is greatly overdone and the in-suit commentaries, this time by two costumed heroes, grate too, while the climactic battle would be more properly termed an anti-climactic battle. The idea of Ben Kingsley's Wizard of Oz-like Mandarin doesn't serve the character well and by now Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts character is very irritating too. Worst of all there are two awkward and embarrassing condescensions to the comic-fan base and I guess target cinema-audience too as Downey Junior is forced into cringe-worthy, humourless scenes with a savvy pre-teen kid and later an adult nerd-fan in a van.

With an incessant, booming, rock soundtrack just to round things off, I saw this in the end as a poorly written, routinely filmed and ultimately empty blockbuster which doesn't bode well for future entries in the franchise.

Time to get out the WD40, methinks.