GI Joe: A Real American Movie

GI Joe was exactly what I had thought it would be; a live action version of the cartoon. What more could you want out of a movie based on a line of action figures? More tongue in cheek than Transformers, it's a summer action movie that does not take itself too seriously. With plenty of hot chicks in skin tight leather, Channing Tatum with a huge (insert your own phallic euphemism here) and in jokes for Joe fans, the movie plays to it's primary audience, kids and those of us who watched it as kids.



The world and we, as an audience have changed over the past twenty years, of course. Rather than the rather absurd plot of the Cobras releasing deadly spores capable of infecting and mutating people like the cartoon movie, the new film has the Joes fighting to stop the release of deadly nanomites capable of infecting and destroying metal objects. But, a ridiculous plot should not keep you form enjoying the movie and neither should the terrible dialouge or the disinterested acting. Indeed, the best performances come from the twin ninjas, Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes, the latter of whom does not even speak. And special notice must be taken of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander, who, out of the entire cast, seemed to understand the tone of the film as hams it up perfectly.

Unfortunately, the movie falls into the same trappings as the Hasbro cartoons of the Eighties, in which the action is mostly deathless combat. Perhaps because I grew up as the son of a Marine and understood the serious consequences of war, I never fully enjoyed the cartoons where the Joes and Cobras would fight every week and nobody ever died and nothing was ever really won. At least one bad guy dies in this movie, I guess to send kids the message that international arms dealing doesn't pay.



PS- I was looking forward to this movie so I could finally find out who Sienna Miller is. Pretty hot.