Review: ‘GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra’

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is the story of a devious young explosion who yearns for nothing more than to blow up everything in sight. This young explosion teams up with fellow explosions, all with the same goal, and together they explode so much that they feel UNSTOPPABLE!!! Unfortunately, this group of evil explosions has forgotten that the good guys have their own army of explosions, which they unleash, setting off a chain reaction of good VS evil, explosion VS explosion to see who can rack up the most damage. After two hours of consecutive explosions [SPOILER ALERT] the good explosions win. Yeah, director Stephen Sommers likes his explosions, even more than Michael Bay (gasp!)

There’s really not a whole lot more to explain than that. Sure, there is a little bit of a “story” underneath all those explosions, like how a hotshot military man, Duke (Channing Tatum), joins GI JOE (where knowing is half the battle) and becomes way more awesome than anyone else in about three seconds of training, and also how another strangely young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) [SPOILER ALERT x2] rises to power as Cobra Commander, and more importantly goes from having a high pitched voice to a low-pitched gravelly voice full of EVIL. Oh yeah, and we can’t forget the futuristic nano-machines, little green robots that eat everything in their path, even entire cities! It makes no sense, but it does make a lot of EXPLOSIONS! However, all these “story” elements serve one purpose and one purpose only: to make things blow up!!!

OK, OK, OK, enough about EXPLOSIONS. If you’re not into loud, fast, stupid ACTION is there anything here to like? Nope. Not one bit. Fortunately, if you can turn your brain off, there is a fairly enjoyable movie in there. We get to see things such as: a military convoy VS an army of Cobra airships (that look much more like alien UFOs), an asian ninja VS a white ninja, machine guns VS energy beam blasting guns (again, very alien), two guys running around Paris in Halo-style battle armor destroying everything in their path, and even a Superman style race against the clock to blow up some missiles. Many of these events are loosely explained with a crazy amount of flashbacks.

The flashbacks in JOE range from pretty cool to laughably awful, with most falling somewhere in between. This is also where almost all of the “character development” takes place. How come the asian ninja hates the white ninja? FLASHBACK. Did Duke used to be friends with Cobra Commander? FLASHBACK. Did Duke used to date the evil Baroness? FLASHBACK. The most ridiculous flashback comes right at the start of the movie, which begins in Paris… in the 1600s. Yeah. GI JOE starts off hundreds of years ago, in a Paris where everyone speaks English. This opening really set up the tone of the movie. As soon as the scene started, everyone in the audience erupted in laughter and the thought came to mind, “is this GI JOE or Van Helsing 2?” Luckily that scene only lasted for a few minutes, before we headed into the “not too distant future”.

It seems like I’ve really been trashing the movie, but like I said it actually was pretty fun. The Paris scene where Duke and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) smash their way through Paris in their Halo suits was pretty great and was probably the most accurate reproduction of how you would play with a GI JOE toy. Even though the suits looked pretty lame (OK, incredibly lame) I couldn’t help but think how cool it would be to be running around like that.

Unfortunately, the weakest aspect of GI JOE are the special effects, which is strange considering that the movie is nothing but special effects. If you’ve seen Van Helsing or Mummy 2, you probably know that director Stephen Sommers is no stranger to bad CG, but here it seems like he’s gotten even that much worse. Every time a CG helicopter passes through the frame, it looks like something out of a mid-nineties video game, and the first time that the big GI JOE plane flies over their base in the desert, the CG was so terrible I almost thought it was a joke. These effects shots, which should be relatively easy to do in this day and age, looked mind-blowingly awful, and no I’m not exaggerating. They are THAT BAD. They also break the very basic laws of physics at the end of the movie when [SPOILER ALERT x3] they make ice sink. That’s right, a giant underwater base is destroyed when they blow up a big chunk of ice, which then proceeds to sink down in the ocean. Uhh, what?

I haven’t mentioned the acting since it’s really not worth mentioning. None of the actors really bring anything special to the movie (not that it’s necessarily their fault) except for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is quite hilarious as the scene stealing “The Doctor” and eventually Cobra Commander. Also, is that Gordon-Levitt doing the low-pitched gravelly voice work? If so, kudos, because it was hilarious.

If you like seeing stuff blow up, by all means go and see this immediately and bring your kids. Out of the two hour run time, there’s maybe about twenty minutes where stuff isn’t blowing up, and the movie certainly never gets boring. Plus, if the kids want to see the movie again, just give ’em a few GI JOE toys and some firecrackers and they can recreate the movie in the backyard!