Oh, good grief. The bird thing was goofy but was involved in a grand total of three scenes and a few minutes, all told. And Cheadle > Howard any day of the week. Ten minutes of Terrance Howard as Rhodey was more than I could stand. It's like they hired Mike Tyson for the ADR. I agree that Fury shouldn't have had so much face time, either, but they pretty much had to once they decided to make him the guy who hooked Tony up with his fahjah's master plans. Which was hokey as all get out, but still...that was SHIELD's role here.
And I have to say that Tony being a drunken lout IS Iron Man being Iron Man. Though I do get your point and agree that, yeah, we want to see Iron Man beating the crap out of other ferro-people.