Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Directors: Lana and Andy Wachowski

Cast: Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne

It’s an interesting thing keeping the pulse of the film industry, you see directors rise to become almost rock stars and then you see them fall, to never be heard from again. They make that one good movie that takes over the world and then a god awful second and third film. For some reason, they can’t recapture whatever it is that audiences loved about their first film; the muse fades away and vanishes completely. I can now say that I have witnessed the downfall of the Wachowski’s, the duo of film directors who became box office sensations when they released the Matrix Trilogy onto the world. Their downward spiral started with Speed Racer (2008), a visually interesting film that tanked at the boxed office, because audiences considered it too cartoony and silly. They continued with Cloud Atlas (2012) a star studded sci-fi film that failed to connect with audiences, probably because it was too complex or convoluted. I’ve yet to watch it in its entirety. That one tanked as well, yet another film by the Wachowski’s that didn’t make its money back. And now, they’ve probably put the last nail on their coffin with Jupiter Ascending(2015), a gigantic mess of a film that didn’t make its money back either. I ask myself, how do these guys keep working when their films keep losing money? I’m thinking Hollywood’s patience with the Wachowski’s is running out, they ‘re probably thinking “third one you’re out dudes”. I don’t think we’ll be seeing a film from these guys in quite some time. Hollywood producers can be very unforgiving when it comes to losing their millions. 

I didn’t want to believe Jupiter Ascending was a huge mess of a film because usually, I’m the guy defending those films that everybody hates for seemingly no reason, like for example Waterworld (1995). Sadly, on this occasion I could clearly see why people didn’t connect with Jupiter Ascending.  It was clear as daylight. First off, it had a female protagonist and that usually spells certain doom for science fiction films. I would love to see more female laden science fiction films, sadly, the track record shows that female laden science fiction films equals death at the box office. It could be one of two things. My theory is not that these films fail because they have women as protagonists; they fail because when they decide to cast a female in a sci-fi film and market it as such, it’s usually a shitty film like Barb Wire (1996), Aeon Flux (2005), Catwoman (2004) or Elektra (2005). I cheer every time they put a female lead in a great science fiction film, say something like Charlize Theron in Mad Max:Fury Road (2015) or Noomi Rapace in Prometheus (2012). But both of these films are rare exceptions and both films were not marketed as having females as leads. Are sci-fi fans mostly chauvinist pigs that won’t go see a movie if they know a woman is the lead? Or are female leads cast in shitty films? Whatever the case may be, Jupiter Ascending was one of the times when they cast a female lead in crappy film. What matters to me with movies is not what gender is leading the film, but if the film is a good one, if it entertains, if it says something. Sadly, Jupiter Ascending failed on all these accounts.  

Where did Jupiter Ascending go wrong? Why was it a huge fail? One of the reasons is that this was The Wachowski’s trying to do their own version of Frank Herbert’s Dune, unfortunately, it feels like the Wachowski’s bit off more than they could chew, because Dune is not a gee-whiz, magical, feel good, happy ending type of novel. It’s deep, complex, political, religious and all encompassing; Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic is the anti-Star Wars and by that I mean, not exactly commercial. It’s dense, it’s epic, yet it has heart, it’s passionate. What the Wachowski’s did was make a soulless commercial version of Dune. They’ve stolen so many elements from Frank Herbert’s Dunenovels that it’s not even funny. The element of royal families feuding over planets, the idea that aristocrats use a drug that makes them more powerful, the idea of young people with wisdom beyond their years, these are all elements taken from the Dune novels, yet Herbert’s novels deliver all these ideas with gravitas, dignity and solemnity. Jupiter Ascending brings it down to b-movie territory, accompanied by cheesy dialog and terrible performances. While Dunekeeps a solemn tone, Jupiter Ascending turns into an overdose of messy computer generated effects involving flying boots and incomprehensible laser battles. I guess the Wachowski’s thought they could pull off a story like Dune, but with an emphasis on action and a dose of ‘cool’ which doesn’t sound so bad. If only Jupiter Ascending didn’t have so many negative elements going for it, I might have enjoyed it.  

"Flash Gordon approaching" 

When I say the film is messy, I’m speaking of the special effects heavy action sequences, which have cool concepts and ideas (like the flying boots) but things move so fast on the screen that all we see is this huge blurry  mess, we can’t really appreciate what the hell is happening on screen. Sometimes the action happens from so far away, we can’t even appreciate who or what we are seeing. This is something that happened to me once before in a film called The MutantChronicles (2008), a film I totally despised. Well, Jupiter Ascending suffers from this same malady; the camera distances itself from the action so much that we can’t see what the hell is happening; mix that with lightning fast action and the end result is you won’t understand a thing happening on screen. The visuals are too fast and too cramped, at times I felt like I was watching a Jackson Pollock painting, look at all those pretty colors, but what the hell is happening? The effects work goes from good to terrible, for example, I loved the look of the spaceships, but I hated these terribly animated lizard men that kept reminding me of the Koopas from Super Mario Brothers: The Movie (1993). These lizard creatures where so obviously computer generated, there was no effort put into making these creatures look remotely realistic or alive. Also, for some reason the film looks very dark, it made it even harder to see anything. 

Jupiter Ascending is infested with ancient clichés that any knowledgeable filmmaker would try and avoid. For example, they decided to dedicate a whole portion of the film to the age old cliché of having the good guy stop the naïve girl from marrying the wrong guy, ugh. That was cool when I saw it in Flash Gordon (1980), with Flash trying to stop Emperor Ming from marrying Gale. But here it feels old hat because it’s been done to death in a million movies before, most recently in John Carter (2012). By the way, this whole thing with the wedding, it plays out exactly like Flash Gordon (1980), so much so that the whole scene felt like a copy paste. I could probably do a whole list of films that end with a wedding having to be stopped by the good guy, so whenever I see this particular cliché I just have to roll my eyes. Yet, here are the Wachowski’s, filmmakers who were once considered groundbreaking, doing a film that’s filled with every single cliché in the book. They even included the one where the bad guy falls to his death! Come on! Don’t believe this film is ridden with cliches? Okay, then count the times in which Channing Tatum rescues Mila Kunis at the last moment from certain doom.

Then we have the main character, Jupiter Jones played by Mila Kunis, in my opinion, a terrible miscast. She doesn’t come off as strong, or a possible leader, nothing like say Paul Muadib in Dune. My advice to The Wachowski’s is, if you’re going to have a female lead a film, at least make her a strong female. Isn’t she supposed to become the leader of a nation? Shouldn’t she at least have demonstrated some leadership skills or at the very least be a go getter? Instead, she comes off like some helpless damsel in distress, and that my friends is just so passé. Audiences want to see strong women who use their brains and smarts to escape their perils. Sadly, Mila Kunis’s character comes off as an airhead who hates her life, she hates honest work. She wants to stay home sleeping. And this is the person to whom incredible responsibilities will be bestowed upon? I guess they were going for a Cinderella type of deal, but with Cinderella, you felt like she deserved better, Mila Kunis’s character doesn’t come off that way. The filmmakers just didn’t demonstrate her changing or evolving, she doesn’t seem to learn to become responsible, her character doesn't go through a journey of growth, or what they call a "character arc". Things just happen. Boom, now she’s royalty, boom know she owns a planet. These magnanimous events don't seem to affect her much, she just takes for granted that she is now responsible for a whole planet. Bottom line, Mila Kunis was horribly miscast here, she falls in my opinion on the list of beautiful actresses who can’t act. She's taken her place right next to Megan Fox. The screenplay with its cheesy dialog, didn’t help much either. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a movie squander its cast in such badly written roles; did the directors not give a crap about solid performances? Was the script beyond repair? Whatever the case, the cast was wasted on this film. Not even recent Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) can escape from this scripts awfulness.

So that’s it my friends, this was in my opinion one of the worst of the year. It’s an overdose of unintelligible CGI. Some reviewers refer to this one as a visual feast, but I don’t, I like to be able to appreciate and look at my visual feasts. Bottom line is this was a real disappointment coming from once groundbreaking filmmakers; there was no intent here to be innovative or interesting. Is there anything good I can say about this movie? Well, I liked those flying boots that’s for sure, but a movie cannot ride on cool flying boots alone. Oh and they cast legendary director Terry Gilliam in a cameo in which he plays a bureaucrat, which was awesome because as most film buffs know, Terry Gilliam’s films are always against bureaucracy! And like I said, the design work on the spaceships and buildings was interesting, but that’s about as good a compliment as I can give this movie. Did I mention this huge mess of a movie is over two hours long? I don’t mind long movies, just as long as they are good. To me Jupiter Ascending was lazy filmmaking, mired by bad writing and lack of originality. Sure it’s trying to be as epic as Dune, but it falls short because it feels like a stupefied version of Dune, which isn’t a good thing.

Rating: 2 out of 5 

Cool boots, bad movie. 

Foxcatcher (2015)

Title: Foxcatcher (2015)

Director: Bennett Miller

Cast: Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller

Steve Carell has gotten an Oscar Nomination for his performance as John Dupont, the mad man millionaire who shot Olympic wrestler Dave Shultz three times, point blank, for god knows what. It’s one of those crimes where we’ll never really know what happened, because those involved won’t say, so it’s probably some really dark secret thing that they don’t want anyone knowing about, which gets your imagination going as to what really happened. Some say it had something to do with exposing Dupont’s potential homosexuality, others attribute the murder to John Dupont’s schizophrenia and others say he was just high on drugs. Similar to The Wolf of Wall Street (2014), this is the story of a millionaire with enough money to be high all the time, on the drug of his choice. Apparently, one of them was cocaine.

So anyhow, the story is all about how John Dupont, one of the richest men in America, decides he is going to fund the American olympic wrestling team by creating a training compound called ‘Team Foxcatcher’. You see, Dupont was an Olympic wrestling aficionado, so he wanted to back the team up, go for the gold by sponsoring these young guns, he also wanted the glory of being called their ‘coach’, though in reality, he had very limited knowledge of the sport. Things go sour when John Dupont’s schizophrenia or his drug abuse begin to show their ugly face. Will Team Foxcatcher win the gold medal? Can the team hold together when its financial backer is a certified wacko millionaire?

So this is one of those movies that runs on the strength of one particular performance and that’s Steve Carell’s portrayal of John Dupont. Everyone else in the film is great, it’s refreshing to see Channing Tatum trying something serious, and the same goes for Mark Ruffallo who turns in a solid performance as Dave Schultz. The thing with Carell’s performance is that we’re used to seeing him play the goofball Manager of Dunder Mifflin, Scranton branch on The Office. But here he is playing a psycho and it’s a drastic change to be sure. It’s not surprising to see a comedian trying something new, comedians always try to branch out into more serious roles in order to stretch their acting abilities, to grow as an actor. We’ve seen a lot of comedians do this, Bill Murray is a good example, but I guess the biggest example would be Tom Hanks, a straight forward comedian who’s suddenly this serious Oscar Caliber actor who rarely makes a comedy anymore. Will we see Carell leave comedy forever afterFoxcatcher? I hope not, to me Carell is such a hilarious actor he should keep making funny movies forever, but of course, an actor wants to expand and grow, so I wouldn't be surprised if he wants to explore the serious/dramatic route for a while.

That's Steve Carrell playing John Dupont on the left, and on the right, the real John Dupont, playing at being a coach for the Olympic Wrestling Team. 

Speaking of the Oscar race, Foxcatcher has been nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. Mark Ruffalo gets the nom for Best Supporting Actor. I think he did a fine performance here playing Dave Schultz, Mark Schultz’s big brother, but he has some stiff competition. The same goes for every category that Foxcatcher is nominated in. If you ask me, Carell and his performance as John Dupont is the only chance Foxcatcher has at winning an Oscar. Even director Bennett Miller, who also directed Capote (2005) and Moneyball (2011) doesn’t have much of a chance against the contenders going up against him. For me, the best director Oscar will go either to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for Birdman or Richard Linklater for Boyhood, simply because of the technical prowess displayed in both of these films and the phenomenal concepts behind both of them. Both Birdman and Boyhood are so much more complex in execution than Foxcatcher, that its pretty obvious either of those two will win. And therein lies Foxcatcherslimited chances, its a pretty simple picture when compared to other Oscar contenders. Don’t get me wrong, Foxcatcher is a completely watchable film with many merits, it just didn’t say much to me, it felt like a lightweight thematically speaking, like empty calories. I mean, the sibling rivalry angle isn’t exploited much and neither is Dupont’s possible homosexuality. Things are sort of touched upon, but never really explored, ultimately, Foxcatcher left me wanting more, I wanted it to dig deeper, but I detected a bit of restraint on the filmmakers part.

Why wasn’t Dupont’s schizophrenia explored more in depth? I mean here’s a guy who reportedly spoke to rocks, thought spirits and spies where after him and thought that treadmills could send him back in time! It would have been interesting to see this angle explored a bit more. The film does go into Dupont wanting to garner others respect, mainly his mothers. Here's a man who's trying to do something great, but is unable to because he himself isn't a "great man", so what does he do? He hangs around the greats, to see if some of that greatness and talent rubs off on him, but that's not how it works. Greatness is achieved through talent and dedication. Dupont wanted to pretend. In regards to Dupont’s schizophrenia, the film reminded me a bit of Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind (2001) a film in which Russell Crowe plays a brilliant mathematician who also talks to imaginary people, yet is brilliant in his own field. The only difference is that A Beautiful Mind ends on a more positive vibe, while Foxcatcher goes down a darker path. So in conclusion my friends, Foxcatcher was a good movie, with a strange vibe which I enjoyed. You know something is off, but you’re not sure what it is.  And we get Steve Carell’s awesome performance, which is strong enough to get him an Oscar this year;  but the competition is tough, we’ll see.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Dave and Mark Schultz during their glory days

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

Title: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

Director: Jon M. Chu

Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum, Ray Park, Byung Hung Lee, RZA

Review: 

G.I. Joe Retaliation is a film I watched with some trepidation because of how the studio got cold feet last summer and took the film off their summer roster. That’s right, Paramount Pictures and MGM spent a couple of millions promoting this sequel as a summer 2012 release then felt unsure about the film, yanked it out of its release date and shifted it to May 2013, almost a whole year after it was made; their reasons? Supposedly they wanted to amp up the effects and convert the thing to 3D. Me? I think they were fixing a couple of things here and there that they didn’t like about the film. Maybe they felt they had a lackluster film and decided to add a scene or two, just to make things flow a little better? Studios do these re-shoots all the time; they are fine by me as long as the end result is worth it. So, was the whole damn thing worth it? Did the studios course of action with this film work?

G.I. Joe Retaliation is about Cobra Commander breaking out of a super high tech underground prison and attempting, yet again, to “rule the world”. How does he plan to achieve this? By kidnapping the president and placing one of his loyal servants known as ‘Zartan’ (master of disguise) in his place. You see, Zartan can morph and look exactly like the president, so without America knowing it, they have a member of Cobra ruling the nation. And soon, at the right time, Cobra will take over! But how will he hold the world at ransom? And how can a disbanded G.I. Joe team stop him from achieving his world dominating goals?

So yeah, I wasn’t all that excited for this movie, in fact, I wasn’t planning on seeing it in theaters, because in my book, when a studio gets cold feet with a movie the way they did with this one, it raises a red flag for me immediately. It means the studio didn’t have faith in their product and thought it would fail if released. But then something happened. The film was released and it shot straight to the first spot at the box office! Reviews were saying “it wasn’t all that bad” and that it surpassed the first one, which wasn’t all that difficult considering how lackluster the first one was; making a better film wasn't a tough task. The real task was giving this one that G.I. Joe feel, something that I felt the original lacked, yet this one has in spades. The term used to describe a film like this one amongst film reviewers is “fluff”, which basically means it’s not an important film, it’s the kind of film you watch, are entertained by and then quickly forget because it doesn’t make a lasting impression on you. I personally think this is exactly the kind of film Retaliation is; pure and simple fluff, but that isn’t a bad thing if that’s what you know you’re going to see.  I knew this was what I was in for, so I just went with the flow. Did I end up having a good time?  Hells yeah. I mean, as everyone is saying, it is way better then the first. It isn’t as jokey, it’s tone is slightly more realistic, but I stress the “slightly”; the film is still very much a comic book film.

First the good points: this film feels like G.I. Joe movie, the vehicles they use in the film were apparently really based on the toys because I recognized a lot of them from my pre-teen years, back when I collected G.I. Joe toys with a vengeance. I was one of these kids who had a bunch of jets and tanks and Joes, and placed them in a bunch of positions, by the end of the day I’d have this big ass war going on, ha, the memories. But yeah, this movie will have you getting a couple of flashbacks if you were a hardcore Joe fan. Coolest part about the whole movie is that Cobra finally looks like freaking Cobra! I loved that about it. Cobra Commander looked so freaking cool with his mirror surface helmet. The voice, the wardrobe all screamed classic Cobra Commander. There are moments where Cobra is looking over his empire  that are too cool for school. On the downside, we didn’t get enough of Cobra; I wanted more of the guy! Instead we get Jonathan Pryce playing Zartan; he’s the villain for most of the picture, I wanted more Cobra!  

How cool does Cobra look?

Also on the downside of things, they treated so many characters like crap. I mean, all the Joes from the first film simply disappear or die, and we’re left with a rag tag bunch of Joes. I loved the addition of Dwayne Johnson into the whole G.I. Joe universe, but I hated the fact that for example they disposed so easily of ‘Destro’ one of the coolest villains that the Cobra’s count with. And where the hell was The Baroness? She was never even spoken of! But whatever, this is a comic book movie and things like this are bound to happen. I’m sure what happened was that the actors simply didn’t want to return to a movie they thought would end up being crap, I bet they all wish they had returned now! I’m sure they will return for a third entry, especially when we take in consideration how successful this film has turned out to be; nobody likes to say no to a blockbuster. Dwayne Johnson fits perfectly in this film, but they also decided to add Bruce Willis as ‘the original Joe’ but he ends up doing the same thing he’s being doing in most movies he is in now, smirking, shooting machine guns and saying one liners.

I enjoyed the fact that thematically speaking the film isn’t entirely hollow, actually, the story touches upon old fears that have, in an interesting turn of events, suddenly re-emerged in the world. I’m talking about nuclear paranoia; memories of the Cold War flashing on everbodies minds, countries threatening to blow each other away. Suddenly we got North Korea threatening to blow the world to smithereens with its nuclear weapons, and the whole world seems to be entering into some sort of cold war yet again. I guess governments want to amp up that all important fear factor in the world, some world leaders like to get cocky and show they are the biggest and baddest. So anyhow, there’s a cool moment in the film where many of the world’s rulers meet in one room to discuss the fate of the world and for a moment it seems like the world will be blown to shreds. I liked that contemporary theme, it rang true. Actually, those scenes had some people giggling in the theater, myself included, the whole idea of these crazy dudes shooting nuclear weapons at each other is so contemporary, so right of the moment. It brought to mind Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (1964). The film points out, in the midst of all its comic book hijinks that the fate of the world lies in the hands of a couple of power hungry nutcases, it’s kind of scary when you think about it.

This new film is stylish, and has a couple of really cool action moments, like for example there’s this whole sequence where Snake Eyes has to escape a temple that’s up in some icy mountains, and he has to rappel the hell out of there, and so suddenly we get this really cool sequence with Ninjas fighting while rappelling down a mountain, which was too cool for school. I mean, the filmmakers themselves even ended the scene by cutting to another scene with people clapping as if giving themselves a pat on the back for the whole thing. Retaliation switches from huge action sequences to political intrigue scenes and it's all very entertaining in my book, it worked. Seeing power hungry politicians pressing red buttons is always entertaining! Even the idea gets me on the edge of my seat, G.I. Joe: Retaliation plays with all these fears that humanity must be feeling as I type this.  Retaliation was directed by a guy called Jon M. Chu, the guy responsible for bringing us such masterpieces as Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) and Step Up 3D (2010); I guess those films made enough money at the box office that he was given the chance to make this one, and that’s cool by me, he showed he could pull off an effects heavy film. Lucky for him that Retaliation has made so much money because a third film in the franchise has been greenlit, something tells me it will be bigger and better. Hopefully the series will continue its steady rise in quality. It might be fluff, but it’s fun fluff.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Title: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

Director: Stephen Summers

So the latest craze in Hollywood is taking a cartoon from the 80s and turning it into a big budget special effects filled movie. It happened with the Transformers, which Michael Bay and his trigger happy crew turned into a huge box office success. Not to mention that the film already spawned an equally successful sequel, which by the way was for me one of the worst films made this year, but that’s a whole other review. The latest of these 80’s cartoon adaptations is G.I. Joe, which was one of the most successful cartoon series to emerge out of the 80s. Whoever was a kid during those years has to remember the show. It lasted half an hour and basically served as a commercial to sell the Hasbro produced G.I. Joe toy line. Its basic premise was that of a top secret military operation which was trying to stop Cobra, a terrorist organization hell bent on conquering the world. Aside from that, the show itself also served as a propaganda machine for the U.S. Military. Now I see that, but when I was a kid I did not realize this at all, to me it was just a cool show. In reality, it was a show trying to infuse kids with a desire to serve the U.S. Military services with pride, get that patriotic pride going at an early age. I guess it was made in part to get kids to want to serve their country just like the characters did in the show. The main slogan of the show lets you know this: “G.I. Joe! A Real American Hero!” The premise of this new film has the Joe’s trying to stop Cobra from destroying the world with a new kind of technology. Basically, a bomb of nano machines (read: microscopic machines) that will eat through anything and continue eating through whatever comes along its path. The Joe’s have to stop Cobra from using this new weapon to bring the world to its knees.

Basically this movie was exactly what I was expecting. Not much invested in depth or a good story, but lots invested in special effects an action. The movie brings absolutely nothing new to the table in terms of storytelling, in fact, it feels tired and done. Many of the plot devices on this film can be traced down to other films we’ve already seen before. For example, when you see the final confrontation between G.I. Joe and the Cobras where the Joes infiltrate Cobras hidden underwater lair, you kind of feel like you are watching a remake of Return of the Jedi or something. Right down to having the Joe’s go into the underwater base as if they were infiltrating the Death Star and escaping mere moments before it blows up into smithereens, just like the death star blows up in the last moments of Return of the Jedi. There’s a confrontation between two ninjas in the film (named Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow) that feels and looks a heck of a lot like the final confrontation between Darth Maul and Quai Gon Jin in Star Wars Episode I. The suits that the Joe’s use in the film which augment their strength and agility are directly influenced by Paramount Pictures Iron Man (2008). Scenes like that just let me see that the director wasn’t trying to be original at all. He was just going down the easy path of doing what others have already done. For Christ sake, we even get a character who is evil but tries to turn good, just like Anakin.

That’s the main problem with films like this one. They are produced so fast, and so little time is taken to come up with a worthwhile story to tell that we just end up getting more of the same. But aside from that, did the film entertain? Let’s face it, while watching a film of this kind, I don’t going in expecting a masterpiece. I was just looking for a fun time, and I went to the theater simply out of nostalgia for this old cartoon show I use to watch when I was 12 years old. I went to see these characters Id seen in my childhood brought to cinematic life. And I have to be honest, that’s exactly what I got. We get some of the key characters from the show, and they looked exactly like what I would have expected them too. The premise of the film mimicked that of the show, which was always about trying to stop Cobra from trying to take over the world. There was nothing ever truly profound of life changing about the shows themes, it was just a poorly animated show made to sell toys. The movie took the cartoons basic premise and went with it.

Have to admit it, nostalgia got the best part of me. It was cool to see the Joe’s secret facilities with all these nifty vehicles and jets, it brought me back to when I was 12, watching the show . It was cool to see Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow kicking each others asses. It was cool to see Cobra becoming Cobra and Destro becoming Destro. And I’m sure this is a movie that many a little kid will find entertaining. Me, I was just a big kid in the theater remembering the Joes. And I had a good time in doing so, there’s lots of car explosions, lots of non stop action sequences, and lots of fx to keep you entertained for half an hour. After a while though, you might feel the CGI overdose light go off inside your head, cause let me tell you, there are times when I felt like the only real thing in the film where the actors and the other 90% of the film was made up of computer generated images. But whatever, that’s a whole new genre of films that’s emerging. That’s where Hollywood wants to go now. I guess it brings down costs some, its cheaper to build something in a computer then building it for real. Sadly, this is the state of big budget special effects films, 90% of what you see on screen exists only within the confines of a computer.

But most of director Stephen Summers movies have always been like this. One look at his resume and you will find CGI infested films like The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Deep Rising and Van Helsing. Also one look at this films cast and you see that Summers has brought many of his old friends back, like Arnold Vosloo who played the mummy in The Mummy movies. Heck, even Brendan Frasier is here in a small role training some of the newer Joe’s.It was a fun movie for what it was. I recommend it to fans of the G.I. Joe cartoons. Those thirty something guys who grew up watching this show in their afternoons after school. I’m sure they will be happy to see their childhood heroes brought to life. Movie goers who dont know what the hell G.I. Joe is will find an empty yet entertaining special effects driven film, that’s derivative of other films and doesn’t try in the least to show us something new or meaningful. It simply wants to wow you with its gee whiz effects, never keep you bored for its entire duration, and have you leave the theater feeling like you just had a sugar rush, only thing is you'll probably forget the film five seconds after you leave the theater.

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5