G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Metascore: 32; RT: 37%; IMDB: 6/10

Verdict:

Cut

The short:

Made for fans of the Hasbro toys by the same name, the movie entertains a low-expectation-having audience through its mix of popcorn movie cliches.

Focus:

I spent the first 20 minutes of this movie eating my Italian BLT foot long.  When I think back to the experience, I now know that the movie could have been enjoyable if I had only continued to pay the same amount of attention to it I was paying whilst I was eating – given my inability as a  man to multitask, especially when eating, this would be a very small amount.  If I had only watched the movie’s explosions with the same amount of deliberation a track greyhound gives to chasing the mechanical rabbit, I may have come out of the cinema mildly satisfied.  If I had only.  Sadly, I had not.

It’s not that I went into this movie thinking it was Citizen Kane but it had been compared to Transformers and I expected the same level of entertainment that it provided – especially since I had paid about the same amount of attention as a fan to both these Hasbro toy franchises when I was a young padawan.  This movie is nothing like Transformers.

The movie’s main weakness is that it lacks a strong lead.  In an action movie, the lead has to have charisma in whatever form that comes in.  Think Bruce Willis in Die Hard, Will Smith in Independence Day or even Arnie in Predator.  The lead has to say cool things and he has to say it in a way that makes you want to repeat it in a retarded impersonation to all your friends.

It’s not that Channing Tatum is a terrible actor, he’s just terrible in this movie (I would blame the director as I thought Kimberly Peirce did a wonderful job with him in Stop-Loss).  Equally bad was the usage of Marlon Wayans whose jokes felt neutered as even he was not able to fill the gaping chasm of charismaless acting plaguing this movie.  I guess I should have known better given Dennis Quaid’s appearance in this movie was no secret.

Overall the movie was too cartoonish where everything that happened was explained away by nano-bots and, despite some epic scenes of real blockbuster quality, a lot of the movie looked cheap making me think I was watching Spy Kids with the props from Power Rangers substituted in.

Speaking of movies it reminded me of, the whole movie felt like a real life version of Team America – minus the acting of course.  I think those puppets had more talent.  I honestly couldn’t decide in parts if the movie was being satirical, or if they had actually ripped off Team America and added real people…but subtracted the humour.

To be fair, the movie has received mixed reviews from audiences – many have loved it or at least thought it was highly entertaining.  I think if you are a huge fan of the G.I. Joe franchise, expecting a movie with nothing more than non-stop explosions, and are slightly mentally retarded to the point where singing B-I-N-G-O repeatedly in your head brings you amusement then you will like this movie.

It’s not that this movie is terrible, it’s that it’s so terrible that I haven’t been able to stop complaining about it for the past 3-4 weeks since I saw it.  There is so much more that is wrong with the movie, but I will leave it at that.