by Erik Buckman

Created on: September 03, 2009

In a last-second ditching of critics by Paramount Studios, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, was instead screened on U.S. military bases and areas with a high-concentration of military families. You know, regular folk who live between the liberal spheres of the East and Left coast. A brilliant tactic by the studio, it aimed to bypass the haughty blowhards to let real Americans ultimately judge the film along with offering screenings to a select group of fanboy journalists. The outcome was a temporarily elevated score on Rotten Tomatoes which quickly deflated during the film's opening weekend.

It's easy to see why.

The latest entry in the burgeoning toy trash genre, G.I. Joe is a classic case of futility. From tragic performances to an equally dreadful script, the movie is not a movie at all: it's a giant bloated commercial for Hasbro to hawk toy submarines to kids. The difference between this movie and past cinematic advertisements aimed at youth (think 1986's The Transformers: The Movie and 1987's G.I. Joe: The Movie) is that this one features a live-action cast made up of B-listers (Sienna Miller, Dennis Quaid, Rachel Nichols, Marlon Wayans) and one indie darling (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) with lines that gives the film an appearance of being a made-for-TV production on Noggin. Shockingly, for a film that has real walking and talking sentient beings, the movie is flat, silly and void of any tangible grown-up content.

The G.I. Joe squad is a NATO faction made up of elite international soldiers with pro-wrestling names if pro-wrestlers were phony. The group is on a mission to stop terrorism, I think, and apparently reenact the opening scene of Team America: World Police minus the funny and baguettes. The Joes are hot after some fancy warheads that were developed by M.A.R.S., a military research company. The warheads, stolen by heavily equipped mercenaries, have the potential to destroy a whole city.

G.I. Joe can be viewed two different ways. Easily one can hearken back to days when all you had to worry about was getting Bazooka back in one piece from your buddy down the street and be in total awe of watching some of your favorite toys acted out on screen. Or, look at it as a full-fledged grown up. Looking at the early reviews of the film, it's easy to see where some members of the Webarati stood. However, the film, despite its ability to give my old toys new things to blow-up, is a watered-down, manipulative, and ultimately uninteresting tale that has such a week foundation it crumbles underneath the massive amount of meh and drippy melodrama. Push-ups and cleavage can only do so much for this mindless fluff.

The memories of G.I. Joe are great; this movie isn't and knowing is half the battle.

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