G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra is a lad's fantasy, the high-tech, big budget cinematic equivalent of blowing up G.I. Joe dolls with M-80s in the backyard. And perhaps that's as it should be. Since Paramount declined to screen the movie for the press ahead of time, like most critics I paid for a ticket and saw G.I. Joe with its intended audience -- a bunch of guys between 20 and 35, with nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon than watch stuff go kaboom. From their enthusiastic response, I'd say that they got exactly what they paid for, and more.
I didn't approach the lone other woman in the theater to ask her opinion, but I wonder if her reaction was as “meh” as mine. I will say this: G.I. Joe is more entertaining than either Transformers flick. Of course, that's a little like saying that athlete's foot is more enjoyable than a venereal disease. Given my druthers, I'd rather not experience either one.
The ostensible plot concerns a Scottish weapons magnate (Christopher Eccleston) who's hatched a plot to steal back a quartet of nano-tech missiles he built for NATO, destroy a few major cities, and then take over the world. Hoping to stop him are the G.I. Joes, an obscenely well-funded, super-secret military outfit headed by Dennis Quaid, who looks bored most of the time. The main soldier-hero character is Duke, played by Channing Tatum, who is very handsome and as talented as a slab of drywall. His best buddy is Ripcord, played by Marlon Wayans. Ripcord's the "funny one," despite not being especially funny.
Along the way, there are flashbacks involving blood-feuding ninjas and someone called the Baroness (Sienna Miller), who works for the Scottish weapons magnate and was once engaged to Duke. This doesn’t amount to a hill of beans but at least offers a break between explosions to let director Stephen Sommers pretend that he's created actual characters with depth.
G.I. Joe is rated PG-13, presumably for the number of things that blow up. Like most blockbuster action films, there's virtually no blood on screen -- but the body count is huge, with hundreds of people being stabbed, shot, melted, tortured, killed by falling buildings, trapped in flaming vehicles and injected with glowing fluids. While Hasbro's G.I. Joe is a toy for children, G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra is strictly for adults. Well, for adults who want to relive their days blowing up their Joes with cherry bombs, anyway.