"G.I. Joe" - REVIEW

I admire Hollywood for constantly trying to outdo itself, but couldn't they, just for once, try to outdo themselves in a good way? It was bad enough this summer with "Wolverine" landing with a thud (although I didn't think it was a trainwreck, many did), and then the insufferable, unavoidable juggernaut known as "Transformers 2" rolled into theaters, pummeling our senses and begging us to shut off our brains completely. But that was May/June. Those two months, along with early July, are when the biggest, loudest, most obnoxious blockbusters roll out. August is where things finally start to cool off. Well, not this year.

The second film developed from a line of dolls (sorry, "action figures") is Paramount's "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" based on the hugely popular military commando action figures/cartoon series that reached its peak somewhere in the early/mid 90s. Only this time, instead of bringing in explosion-master Michael Bay, we get Stephen Sommers, the visionary behind "The Mummy" and "Van Helsing". Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah. Now, after countless lame trailers and TV ads, the last easily identifiable blockbuster has arrived, and it's another dud. But it's a different kind of dud. A very special dud. See, as flawed as "Wolverine" and "Transformers" were, they did have some merit: "Wolverine"'s cast and director were trying hard but stuck with a blah script and hyper-active editing and bad studio management, while "Transformers" had amazing special effects on an epic scale, and looked surprisingly polished. "G.I. Joe" lacks all of this, and it's clear from the start. There's no point bothering with the plot, because there's barely one in the first place, though the film does yammer about some special apocalyptic warheads made by some Scottish guy played by Christopher Eccleston...who...I guess really needed a paycheck.

Regardless, the problems are evident right off the bat. The writing is lazy, the stunts poorly staged and choreographed, and worst of all, the CGI is completely laughable. This film cost $175 million, and yet all of the scampering aliens of the $30 million "District 9" (reviewed in the post above) all look 20 times better. Everything in "Joe" looks like it was ripped straight out of a cartoon, and the flaccid performances and limp attempts at humor, as inoffensive as they are, only make things worse. At the center of it all are Duke (Channing Tatum, making one expression) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans...God help us all), ordinary soldiers who get swept up into the mysterious Joe crowd after being ambushed by The Baroness (Sienna Miller) and a bunch of goons. Turns out, Duke and Baroness used to have a past, which we're told about via fleeting flashbacks. Actually...this movie has a LOT of those. Almost everyone has somesort of flashback at some point, most irritatingly rival ninjas Stormshadow and Snake Eyes, who get about 5, despite being definitive supporting characters. And that's where it all starts to get annoying. Apparently studios seem to think that because a film is based off of a toy or video game, it somehow has permission to be unfathomably bad because "it's from a kids show". Frankly I'm sick of this logic, and hopefully after this summer at the movies, most audiences are as well. Thankfully it doesn't drag, although it doesn't have the ludicrous energy that "Transformers" had, despite being considerably shorter.

So in the end, how bad is Sommers' latest summer offering? Pretty bad. It's story is weak, performances non-existant (although somehow not embarrassing either), and worst of all, its visuals look cheesy despite the enormous budget. Unfortunately, a sequel, which the film was practically begging for during its last 20 minutes, has already been greenlit, so it's doubtful that Hollywood will be learning from its mistakes anytime soon.

P.S. What the hell was Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing in this movie? Was he that desperate for big money? Good lord, the whole world's gone mad!

Grade: C-