Secure Immaturity

I have to express wonder at the creators of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. I mean, I’ll ignore the ridiculous and brain dead script, the atrocious acting, the mind numbing plot, the fact I dropped six IQ points by spending money on the rental and the simple fact that the film rips off, shot for shot, every mainstream action film from Return of the Jedi to ID4. I WILL ignore them. . .I will. Because the film makers have done two profound things by making the action-adventure film GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra: they’ve mastered biological sciences and discovered a way to reanimate a corpse (in this case,  Channing Tatum) and mastered defense technology by creating the most deafening noise ever heard by human ears. If Bid Laden was to put GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra in his DVD player in his tent, he’d die from the brain hemorrhage he’d have after hearing six minutes of it’s soundtrack.

But I also think Bin Laden would jump for joy (pending he survives the deaf-ray) at seeing how America’s finest in the film (the Joes themselves) have the worst success rate in the history of heroes. Here are a few of their achievements:

• Upon asked to deliver a simple briefcase containing the world’s most destructive weapon the normal Army gets its ass beat. The Joes come in to save the day, are also whooped, and only obtain the cargo because our pectoral hero saves the day and the case. The Joes, showing thanks, tell our hero how much he sucks.
• When the Joes take control of the weapon case, they allow the Scottish bad guy, who gives it away with his over-the-top-I-Will-Rule-The-World accent, look at the briefcase and activate a homing device that reveals the Joes secret base. I mean, they don’t even blink when they let the guy open the case. ‘Sure, go ahead’, I think one of them says.

• When the Joes’ base is attacked by evil Scottish guys’ army, the Joes decide the only way to destroy the enemy soldiers is not to utilize elite military training but to use high tech ballistic weapons that will destroy the entire infrastructure of their own base upon their firing (but at least they got the bad guys)! And to add to that, some GI Joes, despite large, subterranean vessels busting through miles of the earth’s core into the base itself (which has to be noisy), simply stand at attention behind thin pillars so sword wielding douche buckets, like Storm Shadow, can look cool and slice them down while walking to a heavy metal soundtrack.
• When the bad guys decide to launch a nanomite (! don’t ask) missile at the Eiffel tower, the Joes either commandeer motorcycles or wear goofy CGI space suits and destroy the entire city of Paris. . .and still fail. The Eiffel Tower is destroyed anyways. Good job.
• When the bad guys launch three more missiles set to destroy Moscow, Washington DC and. . .China (I guess). . .the Joes can only effectively destroy one (since the whole point was to go the base and stop the missiles from being launched in the first place I guess you can chalk that up to failure since all three managed to launch). When Marlon Wayans Joe pursues the other two in a plane he makes up for the failure by destroying one but then, at point blank range, misses the other one. AT POINT BLANK RANGE. So he decides to take the risk of destroying Washington DC by pretty much letting the missile blow up. Luckily he manages to suck the nanomites up into the atmosphere (where he ejects in outer space but manages to come down to earth without his chute or his whole body burning into nothingness).
• When the bad guys decide they need to regroup they decide to blow up the entire arctic circle (did I mention the bad guy’s base was under water in the Arctic. . .yeah, I forgot about that). Instead of stopping the bombs from going off the Joes let an entire section of the worlds ice caps blow up and sink to the bottom of the ocean (making Global Warming go: ‘thanks guys, that saves me a few years’).

These guys aren’t America’s Heroes, they are America’s jack asses. And they aren’t actually American either. The main hero, Douche. . .er. . .Duke. . .is American as is his best friend Marlon Wayans Joe (who, despite the lack of racial stereotyping seen running rampant in, say Transformers 2, still manages to say ‘bust a cap’). But everyone else is English, French, Valley Girl (it’s another race in my book) or mute-Japanese/white/Ken-not-Ryu-hybrid. GI JOE: REAL AMERICASIUROPEAN HEROES!

But enough of my griping. There are a few things that make GI Joe work. One)it has awful visual effects. This makes any movie experience in which we are suppose to believe our actor-challenged lead is to be taken seriously in a poor man’s Iron Man outfit worth watching. Two)The film has some of the best ‘please enjoy me because I am so cheesy’ archetypes (which are: the maniacal laugh at the end (like moohahaha (and I’m not kidding), the death of a bad guy when he responds to a whistle and a ‘woah’ or ‘that’ll work’ moment when a BFG-type weapon or vehicle is used). Three)Sienna Miller is in this as the Baroness. While Scarlett Johansson was my dream choice for the role. . .Miller makes me feel funny when she laughs and shoots things. I like it. Four)Snake Eyes, despite having a mouth (the fuck?), is pretty neat and has some cool sword fights. Fifth and Final)Well. . .that;s it actually. I was trying to come up with a fifth one so it looked like the movie is better then I’m making it sound but. . .it sucks so never mind.

This movie hurts. Dennis Quaid must of had a stroke or realized he was in a stinker because his character manages to ‘dissapear’ for a large chunk of the incomprehensible movie. Jonathan Pryce: oh how the mighty have fallen. At one point he utters the line ‘now its up to the Joes’. I imagine the director said cut and he went into his trailer and blew his brains out.  The movie also hired, in an attempt to be All Americasiuropean, actors with the thickest accents ever. Here is one scene of dialogue involving Heavy Duty, whose English, with nerdy-computer-nerd Joe (who has a sort of French thing going) and uber-cheese-baddie Chris Eccleston, whose Scottish:

Heavy Duty: Lads, nor to rif fight nof to right mate?

Eccleston: Fookin rat toon your water tank you right ninny?

French Joe: Poo poo de poo poo de poo poo poo de Intel Pentium poo poo.

Channing Tatum: DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH

So if you are in to being deaf, dumb, blind and like 117 minutes of dialogue like above then watch GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

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