August 14, 2009
Not even one porkchop sandwich.
I saw G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra!
It was shocking.
I mean, seriously, the trailers looked horrible. Like some bad son of Transformers that was going to be painful to sit through the whole time. And yet, my friends decided they were going, so I decided to come along.
Maybe it’s just the power of lowered expectations, but goodness, I really enjoyed this film. I mean, don’t get me wrong. It is dumb. Completely stupid. But man, unlike so many things that are stupid, it KNOWS its stupid. It knows it is based off of a cartoon that was created just to sell action figures. The Joes have no less than 4 million vehicles, some of which have parts that do nothing. (At one point, they get on these snowmobiles that have wings, which, after jumping like three feet out of the transport they were on, detatch. What’s the point of that?) There are crazy lasers and weapons, there are always random armies of guys about whenever someone needs a fight scene… it’s just so dumb, but it knows it. It embraces it. Why not have a weapon make an entire floor explode one minute, and then bounce off of the hero the next for no reason? Why not have a nonsensical “nanomite” weapon that is sometimes dangerous and sometimes not, whenever it’s appropriate?
This movie gave me much of the same rush as Shoot ‘Em Up did when I saw it in the theater. Constantly I was going “That makes no sense!” and “What the fuck!” but at the same time it was so thrilling and just unashamedly fun that I didn’t care. I was thinking I wasn’t going to like the movie going in, and apparently that was a bad plan. When I got there, my expectations were surpassed.
The only letdown was that there wasn’t a PSA after the credits. What a complete waste of a perfect opportunity.
But yeah, no. This won’t win any awards. I will probably never watch it again. But it was just a fun, stupid evening of action and explosions, and I had a shockingly good time. Watch it to MST3K it, or just watch it to watch things explode, and you won’t be disappointed.