G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Stars Ty gives **1/2

Title: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Directed by Stephen Sommers
Starring
Channing Tatum
Marlon Wayans
Sienna Miller
Rachel Nichols
Dennis Quaid
Release date August 7th 2009

This movie is every boys wet dream . This movie has action, explosions, and a contempt for France, since a lot of the action and explosions involve blowing up the streets of Paris and destroying the French's much loved Eiffel Tower. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the wet part. This movie also has hot babes clad in leather, battle suits with low, unzipped zippers, and high heels who kick butt with their martial art skills, shoot guns that never miss, and jump out of helicopters. Pretty cool. And of course they're nice to look at. I do appreciate the guys too. Channing Tatum (Step Up as Tyler Gage and She's the Man as Duke for you girls, and Coach Carter as Jason Lyle and Fighting as Shawn MacArthur for you guys) plays... well, a guy named Duke and is pretty much a rock star who knows it without trying to show it. He's a good guy. An all-American hero. He's the perfect G.I. Joe. He also has a good buddy who is his side kick, equal, and friend played by Marlon Wayans (The Sixth Man as Kenny Tyler and White Chicks as Marcus Copeland) who plays Ripcord. The girls, otherwise known as Sienna Miller (Nikki in Alfie, Edie Sedgwick in Factory Girl, Victoria in Stardust) plays the bad girl clad in black, known as The Baroness, and Rachel Nichols (Rachel Gibson on Alias, Jessica in Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry met Lloyd, and Galia, the green skinned alien on Star Trek. OMG WTF!) plays the fiery red headed Shanna 'Scarlett' O'Hara. Haha. Oh, and there's Dennis Quaid (If you don't know who Dennis Quaid is, fail. Look him up on Google.). He's the man in charge and well, they really didn't need to hire someone like Dennis Quaid for the role of General Hawk. So we have an alright cast. Great.
So how is the plot? It's pretty decent. Pretty complicated. Too complicated to write about but if you were a fan of the cartoon G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero or the G.I. Joe comics, both of which I wasn't allowed to watch or read when I was a kid, then you probably know a lot more about G.I. Joe than I did. I was more of a Transformers kid. Anyways, the plots alright and pretty easy to follow. A couple of twists and turns and a whole lot of back story. That's pretty neat.
So how are the special effects? Well good And bad. Some special effects are great. The scenes were they're shooting people, destroying buildings, jumping over and running through trains, and a Humvee that flips cars through the air are pretty amazing. Other scenes such as the ships that go through the water in the Arctic, the green stuff that explodes out of the warheads and eats its way across anything metal, and the grey metal thing that comes out of the Humvee that flips the cars and folds out like something out of Transformers yet looks like its made out of cardboard are way cheesy. It's like they forgot to finish these scenes or simply put too much time and money on the good stunts and not enough on the others.
So lets talk about some things I was puzzled by. One. Jonathan Price (Gov. Weatherby Swan in Pirates of the Caribbean 1,2, and 3) plays the American president. The filmmakers know he's British right? Welsh actually, and he sounds exactly the same from the Pirates trilogy. Two. Joseph Gordon-Lewitt (Angels in the Outfield as Rodger Bomman, 10 Things I hate about you as Cameron James, and Brick as Brenen Frye) has come a long way and has a rather impressive acting career, happens to be in the critically acclaimed film 500 Days of Summer this year, yet chooses to be the baby faced kid brother Rex in this movie? He's a year younger than Channing Tatum and happens to be older than Sienna Miller by a few months and yet he's playing the little brother? Just because you look young, does not mean you need to act young. 3. Cameos of people are supposed to be clever and funny. Stephen Sommers who not only directed this movie but was made famous for directing The Mummy and The Mummy Returns had Brendan Fraser cameo in this movie. Makes sense since Brendan Fraser plays Rick O'Connell in those movies, except that they probably spent less than thirty seconds on this cameo and from what I could tell when watching the movie they barely or didn't even introduce who he was. FAIL. A good example of a cameo is Arnold Vosloo (High priest Imhotep in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns) as Zartan whose cameo shows him in one scene as the guy walking a camel through the Egyptian desert at night. Now that's LMAO funny. Then there's Kevin J. O'Conner who like Helena Bonham Carter with Tim Burton, seems to cameo in almost everything directed by Stephen Sommers. The Stephen Sommers movies he's been in so far are Deep Rising as Joey Pantucci, The Mummy as Beni Gabor, Van Helsing as Igor, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra as Dr. Mindbender. He's kind of creepy, like Helena Bonham Carter, so I guess that works.
So is this movie worth your $7,00, $8,00, $9,00 dollars to go see? No. Is it worth a dollar or a free coupon out of Redbox machine? Maybe. To sum up, this movie is nothing but hot individuals running around a computer generated world doing things we wish the actual military could do. The end. Like I said in the beginning. Every little boys wet dream.