If the original was a well-oiled fun machine with Robert Downey Jr. as the rare un-anguished superhero who actually reveled in his powers, the overblown “Iron Man 2” finds our hero clanking his way through tedious subplots and a talky script that’s dangerously low on Tony Stark’s trademark quips.
This megabucks sequel will likely reap untold hundreds of millions on the back of its much superior predecessor, which I gave 3 1/2 stars.
But it’s only fitfully entertaining as an all-star indie team led again by director Jon Favreau, who gets swallowed up by the same sort of overproduced overkill as “Spider Man 3.”
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As the film opens, Tony Stark, the zillionaire playboy who came out as Iron Man in a press conference at the end of the last movie, is dying from Palladium, the element that powers his Iron Man suit.
As if that weren’t enough of a downer, a senator (Garry Shandling) who doesn’t appreciate that Tony “successfully privatized world peace” (as our hero puts it) wants to nationalize Iron Man.
And Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a rival arms manufacturer, has joined forces with Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a rogue Russian physicist who has a grudge against Tony and our hero’s late father.
Tony’s own issues with his dead dad (John Slattery of “Mad Men” in flashbacks) are also in the background as our hero starts a bigger version of the old man’s massive technology fair at Flushing Meadows — which he amusingly launches by descending on a stage filled with chorus girls.
Closer to his fabulous cliffside home in Malibu, he’s installed the long-suffering “Pepper” Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) as CEO of Stark Industries.
It isn’t exactly a surprise that her dishy successor as Gal Friday, Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson), is a double agent not only for Hammer but fellow Marvel superhero Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who continues vamping with a cameo until he gets a blockbuster of his own.
There’s so much clunky exposition in the script attributed to Justin Theroux that it seems forever before the first action sequence, which has surprisingly mediocre special effects.
Vanko, wielding what resembles electric lariats, confronts Tony, who for no good reason has impulsively decided to compete in the Grand Prix de Monte Carlo.
Tony wins that round, but his increasingly self-destructive behavior — he all but levels his mansion while on a bender at his birthday party — persuades his former pal Lt. “Rhody” Rhodes (Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard from the first film) to steal one of Tony’s suits on the military’s behalf.
That Rhody is surprised the suit is turned over to Hammer by his superiors is one of many things that make little sense in this sequel.
Tony finally starts having some fun — and making some quips — toward the end of the movie, a huge showdown in Flushing Meadows that ends rather anticlimactically.
Rourke is a nutty villain in a largely non-speaking role, and Paltrow is reduced to mothering our hero.
Johannson has little to do but pout when she isn’t maiming bad guys. She’s given exactly one decent line — asking Tony “dirty enough for you?” when she hands him a martini.
Even Christiane Amanpour and Bill O’Reilly have more to say in their cameos.
“Iron Man 2” doesn’t match, let alone surpass, the heavy metal standard set by its predecessor.
While it has its moments, there are times when I found myself agreeing when the ADHD-addled Tony complains he finds something “boring, boring.”
lou.lumenick@nypost.com