G.I. JOE, THE RISE OF COBRA is absolutely perfect--without being actually any good.
Let me explain. You remember G.I. JOE. That was the show where the villains, Cobra, were always trying to take over the world in some spectacularly dumb-ass way, and G.I. JOE was there to stop them, eventually. It was a great formula. No matter how inexplicable Cobra's plot was (one involved a series of fast food restaurants- seriously: http://www.allmovie.com/wo
The show has never- and will never- be parodied better than in Homestarunner.com's the CHEAT COMMANDOS, featuring the immortal line, "It looks like Blue Laser's going to take advantage of Price Style's already low, low prices on paper towels and grout cleaner and use all the savings to make a button that will make it snow at the beach!" But I digress.
The point is, the original show was pretty stupid, yet fun. Pretty cool-looking and very thick heroes and villains battling it out with weapons that don't exist (...yet!) And the movie delivers just that- man, that ninja is cool, but whoops! G.I. Joe was completely unable to stop Cobra from blowing up the Eiffel tower! At least they managed to blow up half of Paris in their failed attempt. If you're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to blow up a fake version of a city, it might as well be Paris. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen blew up Venice, see where it got them.
The Joe's are led by Generic Action Hero Duke (Channing Tatum) and Hawk (Dennis Quaid.) You remember Dennis Quaid. He's pretty much right where you left him. Ray Park is Snake Eyes, who doesn't say much, and when you're a ninja clad in black, you don't have to. The President (Jonathan Pryce) hangs around and notes that it's perfectly understandable that the French are "upset" that the Eiffel Tower is, c'est catastrophe, no more. That green-skinned girl from Star Trek is back (Rachel Nichols), with the same red hair but less green skin as Scarlett. We don't know much about her, other than she's attractive and speaks Celtic. That's enough in this movie to out-pace Marlon Wayans, who is on hand to be the token black guy. Can we retire this stereotype already? I know it's played by one of the CREATORS of White Chicks, but that doesn't make it okay.
The villains are much better. The two main baddies, Destro (Christopher Eccleston) and Cobra Commander (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are locked in an over-acting contest that can only end in gales and gales of laughter. Cobra Commander wins, if only because he gets to breathe into a death mask for most of the movie. ("You.... will call me... COMMANDER... ") Storm Shadow is the white ninja, and the raging yang to Snake Eyes's sober yin. To say they fight to the death is no spoiler, for ninjas were put on this earth to do battle for man's amusement.
There can be only NONE.
And let's not forget the Baroness (Sienna Miller), whose primary purpose is to show cleavage and smirk. If she looks fake here, well, she looked and sounded pretty fake in the show. So if nothing else, her performance is authentic and she blows a lot of stuff... er, up.
This is all pretty silly stuff, but oddly, it rarely stops being entertaining. Only when various actors try to act (Tatum, Miller, Wayans; natch) do we get into trouble. No one cares that Scarlett's father taught her to never lose. No one cares that Destro's family was a scottish clan of weapon traders. We DO care about a giant underwater base that must be infiltrated by ninjas, surrounded by robotic fish and armed with a self-destruct mechanism that somehow causes ice to sink. Ice doesn't sink, but of course, that kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun isn't a super villain, so you takes your chances with reality when you enter a Stephen Sommers movie. This is the man who gave us The Mummy; he also, unfortunately gave us the The Mummy Returns. I'd say he's returned to form, but I'm not sure it's a compliment.
Great art this obviously isn't. Great trash it ain't either. But after Wolverine, Terminator and Transformers, it was nice to walk out laughing instead of shaking with rage or indifference. I thoroughly enjoyed how over-the-top and dumb this movie was, if only because the joke wasn't on me.
Is it idiotic? Yes. Worst script of the summer? Possibly. Laughably bad acting? Oh my. But key word here- LAUGHABLY bad. Laughing. As in, having a good time.
You want a good dumb movie? You've got your ticket. You want to see a sci-fi movie that matters? DISTRICT 9 just opened and I see it on Wed. Talk at you then.
RATING: * * * (out of 5)
P.S. 3 stars? Really? File this review under the Kombat, Mortal category: it does what it proposes to do, nothing more or less, and it is absolutely as advertised. If, under no circumstances, you could ever see yourself enjoying a movie called or about G.I. JOE, go ahead and downgrade the rating to one star.
P.P.S. Seriously. Cheat Commandos. Awesome.
I JUST HATE YOU SO MUCH!
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