4 out of 5

Director: Stephen Sommers

I accept that I’m awful and that this is not a four star movie. But I want to give some credit where its due: I dont think Stephen Sommers was aiming for anything more than ridiculous, fast-paced fun distraction with this lil movie called G.I.Joe, and while, I suppose, if I had been waiting years for this movie Id feel miffed, I think if you go back and view the cartoons youll feel a nice carryover of the cheese factor to the big screen. The weaving of the plot is pretty deliberate, but essentially you have some really sharp, uh, army? guys who get wrapped up – pretty easily – in super secret G.I.Joe, because the Joes need all the help they can get to stop an evil guy from doing evil things. All the acting is straight-forward without any silly flair, the background pieces on characters are enough to establish their 2-dimensionality, and the direction dispenses with flash to just keep moving forward as quick as possible, lest you stop to think about how silly the thing is. But how can it not be silly? As far as the effects: yes, the large scale CGI effects are pretty unconvincing. They look like old Playstation graphics. Again, though, this is where the fun of the film comes into play: Michael Bay tripe like Transformers wouldve spent minutes dawdling over these huge special effects pieces, but Sommers knows youre not going to care three seconds later so he just keeps moving to the next set piece. Similarly with character development: he respects these actors (Frasiers cameo being testament) and knows how to make manly men and sexy women without bare chests or slow-mo motorcycle straddling. Theres hardly any dawdling time in the entire film, and thats entirely to its benefit. Its not good, its not great, but I was enjoying watching it and didnt mind that it was 118 minutes long.