Yo Joe!

I had to see it because I grew up in the 80's--so back off, okay?!

Here are the things you need to know about GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

It's cardinal sin (here's looking at you, Star Wars prequels) is that it just plain isn't fun. There was no point during this movie when the characters, the action, or anything else made me happy. It was just a chore, through and through. In a day and age when you can find eight billion fun or funny things on Youtube within seconds, a movie can't afford to be funless from start to final frame.

The actors are wooden. Channing Tatum seems born to play high school football players--there just isn't a lot going on in this guy's noggin. He falls blandly in a dull netherworld between the original Rocky (who you pity because he's dumb as a brick) and some sort of trendy 'Fast 'n' Furious' type rogue (the kind of character that is lost on me). But I liked what one reviewer said about Dennis Quaid's 'General Hawk': He barks out orders "like your drunken uncle at Thanksgiving dinner."

America is mostly safe. The Joes operate out of Egypt (maybe because real estate is cheaper there?). We spend most of the movie watching French Moroccan and British 'Joes' rescuing Paris and Moscow. Maybe it's the poor direction and pace of the movie, or maybe it's our current geopolitical state, but I looked around the theater during the "save the Eiffel tower" scene and nobody seemed all that concerned.

WOULDA COULDA: I would have set this movie in another timeframe. Maybe during, or just post-WWII, or maybe the Sixties (interesting setting for a patriotic fighting force) or even the Eighties. And we should have had older heroes. How could Channing Tatum have earned the 3,437 tour of duty ribbons he's wearing when he looks like he's 23 years old?

Bring on Michael Biehn! Protagonist of Terminator, and supercool military squad leader in Aliens, The Rock, Navy SEALS (movie: bad; Biehn: good) and The Abyss. Come to think of it, how was Biehn NOT in a movie about a supercool American military team? If there is one guy who can walk around with a gun in a movie that springs from 1980's nostalgia and make it work instantly (with the exception of maybe der Gubernator), it's Michael Biehn.

DEATH BLOW: I'm not trying to be mean when I say this--really. But you know your military movie is bad when the audience is wishing it was more like a Michael Bay movie. I was missing the guns (with bullets, not lasers) and standoffs between Michael Biehn and Ed Harris I remember from The 90's blue-camo-cheesy Rock.

Seriously, Stephen Sommers? You forced me write that you something to learn from Michael Bay? Yowtch.

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL: The movie ends with all villains surviving and vowing to get revenge in GI Joe 2: An Insult to Your Brain. This goes to show the one character attribute these filmmakers possess that I sorely lack: Unabashed, I-don't-care-what-people-or-numbers-say, hopeful-to-the-point-of-idiocy optimism.