"Iron Man 2" suffers from an all too familiar problem these days. Hollywood has become so good at giving us great special effects that this is what they are content to do. Plot? Dialog? Bah! Who needs them! We've got great special effects!

Take this as an example of the supposedly funny dialog in this movie: "Where are you going?" "New Mexico." "Land of enchantment." "So I'm told."

Whoa! Zip! Bam! Bing! Move over Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn! Honestly, was anyone really laughing at dialog that lame? The deeper problem isn't just that the dialog is bad, it's that the makers of the movie didn't care! Everything would be forgiven, they felt, because of the wonderful special effects.

I pray that Hollywood soon moves beyond our current "can you top this?" phase and returns to the basics of good film making: Plot, characters, dialog.