It's a confidently tongue-in-cheek piece of blockbuster engineering, sweetly calibrated to Downey's cavalier appeal and to Kingsley's oddball interjections, a battle royale of rampant egos in which acting speaks louder than words.

CNN: Review: 'Iron Man 3' a sweetly calibrated blockbuster

Kenneth Turan, writing in The Los Angeles Times, called it "unexpectedly - and successfully - darker and more serious than its predecessors", while CNN's Tom Charity called it "a confidently tongue-in-cheek piece of blockbuster engineering".

BBC: Iron Man 3 triumphs at US box office

Sometime last year, people began sharing tongue-in-cheek online reviews of the banana-shaped piece of yellow plastic with their Facebook friends.

NPR: As Facebook Matures, Is It Losing Its Edge?