This is the reason why I don’t like reviewing movies where I spoke with one of the stars of. It colors your opinion or makes it difficult to be super critical, but I have to say I walked into G.I. Joe expecting to thoroughly hate it and I wasn’t planning on writing a review due to Paramount not screening it for critics. But I felt obligated because I told the cool Ray Park (Snake Eyes) that I’d send him a copy of my review. I loved this movie and not because it’s a “fun,” “dumb,” summer action movie – not that, that should be a bad thing. When did it become fashionable to not have FUN at a movie? It is that, but it’s the tone that I loved, Director Stephen Sommers (best known for doing the Mummy movies) could have easily dumb this down and camped it up but he didn’t (other than the awful super suit moment). Let’s start with the bad. The super suits that Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) wear are about as bad as I thought they would be. The entire Paris destruction sequence is ruined by the ridiculousness and chunkiness of these oversized metal suits that give the wearer super human capabilities. Not only that but the G.I. Joes are supposed to be the best of the best so it diminishes their uniqueness by forcing them to wear enhanced armor.
Snake Eyes didn’t have any really cool moments – like I expected. Maybe it’s because I was too focused on that weird Mask. At first I thought they had put Ray in “Black face,” later I realized that it was just a horrible looking mask. It’s weird, when you see the movie stills the mask looks awesome, but it doesn’t work in the movie. I love Ray Park and always think there should be more of him. Whenever Sommers had a scene with Snake Eyes it looked like it was from a weird angle. But I don’t fault Ray for this and his fight sequences were cool, but I expected more oomph to them or maybe a bigger build up. I liked how they handled Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow’s (Byung-hun Lee) past but the final confrontation still lacked weight.
I was concerned about Marlon Wayans being cast in this, to obviously be comic relief, but I thought there was a lot of good chemistry between he and Channing. I could actually see these two being friends in real life. But what really worked for me, surprisingly so is the chemistry and back story between Duke and The Baroness (Sienna Miller) it gave the movie emotional resonance for me. I bought into their relationship and the conflict between the two. The twist at the end felt forced and it’s never properly explained (I don’t want to give away a major spoiler) why xxx goes with yyy other than to say he was “enamored,” with nanotech? That was incredibly dumb it would have helped if they gave us more back-story on xxx so that his betrayal actually meant something.
The elephant in the room was the total lack of Cobra Commander. I spent the entire film waiting for his appearance and when it finally happened, it seemed “superfluous” and tacked on but at the same time, I was like, “yeah, finally!” The main leader of the terrorist group (its never called Cobra) is Destro (Dr. Who’s Christopher Eccleston). They gave some unnecessary back story to Destro, but it all came together in the last few minutes. The movie didn’t do enough nods to its source material, would it have killed them to use some of the signature music and cues from the cartoon? The soundtrack here was horribly generic. But it had me the first time General Hawk (Dennis Quaid) said, “And knowing, is half the battle.” I almost stood up and cheered at that.
Conclusion
The cast chemistry worked for me, thought the ‘sploshins where good and when the Joe’s first appear to save Duke and Ripcord was a really cool way to introduce them. While the dialogue was terrible in places, I really liked the overall story. Casting was spot on from Ray as Snake Eyes to Sienna’s Baroness to Scarlett (Rachel Nichols). They kept the pacing of the cartoon, it was never boring or slow and its great that they didn’t “minimize,” Cobra’s effectiveness. They spent most of the movie kicking the Joes’ butt. When, oh when are they going to learn never to take hostages? So many of Cobra’s plans fail because they take a hostage who somehow always lead the Joes to Cobra’s secret lairs. Happens all the time in the cartoons and happens here. The stuff with Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) was just silly and seemed out of place, it’s sole purpose to set up the inevitable sequel which I’m now looking forward to seeing.
Final Grade B+
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 8.07.09
i went in expecting to hate this review –and did! not because i don't agree with some of the opinions expressed, but because it was so poorly written that most of the review was unintelligible or very close to it (including the quote offered on Rotten Tomatoes, in which one sentence directly contradicts the next). please, for the sake of your high school english teacher, who already feels like language and its proper use is being eroded, edit this shit. and write sentences with fewer digressions and parens and stop putting words in quotes for no reason. i am glad that you seem to know your way around GI Joe a little. that's cool. but the rest of it made me sad. this will not get posted. this will get screened out.
Good review. I think the best way to sum up the movie was that I went in expecting something like Transformers and came out feeling more like I had watched something akin to X-Men. B+ is just about right.
I hate pretentious junior gramatarians who think they are the end all be all of what's "correct" English. I don't care if you like the review or not, usually when people don't want to argue the substance, they resort to "oh my god, it's so badly written and gasp, there's a comma out of place." My review is a stream of consciousness it's not meant to be grammatically correct. Go read the Washington Post if you want some boring, staid, English lit style movie review.
I enjoyed your review, thanks. Still, I think anything a person commits to in writing ought to be grammatically correct. If you publish (reviews, blogs, articles, whether here or the Washington Post) you should expect critical comments on grammar as well as content. If you'd edit your work in the future, then maybe you'll only get comments on the substance of your views. You might find that more satisfying.
As for G.I. Joe, after reading a few reviews, including yours, maybe I'll give it a shot. I really expected it would suck, particularly once I saw Marlon Wayans in the cast (sorry my brother) but hey it's a movie based on a cartoon created to shill toys – it was never Citizen Kane to begin with, right? Thanks.
No one criticized you for being boring or staid, they criticized you for being nearly incomprehensible. You don't just misplace commas, you demonstrate the most important reason to order one's language: it aids in ordering one's thoughts and expressing them accurately.
Your critics are not "resorting" to criticizing your grammar, usage, and punctuation because they can't find anything to criticize in your content. they're criticizing those things because their poverty degrades your content in two specific ways:
1) It's hard to understand poor sentence structure. Even if the sentence does ultimately make sense, the reader is distracted from that sense by the task of parsing, which would come automatically in a better constructed sentence.
2) The fact that you are either incapable of putting together a coherent paragraph or just don't care to damages your credibility. If you're that stupid, your opinion probably isn't very intelligent; if you're not as dumb as you come off, then why should I care what you have to say when you've shown so little regard for me as a reader that you can't be bothered to proof-read?
Your whining, whinging response would be disappointing if your article hadn't already prepared me to hear from a middle-schooler.