Let me start things off by summing up this movie: fun, but lacking any intelligence at all. After much debacle with the group I normally see movies with, I ended up going with a couple of coworkers to a right-after-work showing of Joe. The theater started off empty, but ended up filling up quickly. And for an opening day showing, the audience was about as responsive as a turnip.
The reason for this, I believe, was the sheer stupidity of this film. The story was lame in the places it existed at all. The acting varied between so-so and awful, and the CGI... well, I'll get to that in a bit.
So, the story. What little of it there is. The Cobras steal a shipment of warheads that are filled with little robot things that eat anything the missile impacts. Think of these as the little microbot things that are set to destroy the world in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Exact same idea, except these things have a green tint and can be disabled via a "kill switch" that has a conveniently big OFF button. Oh, and they function as a mind control device too.
This is also an origins story, so there's a ton of flashbacks, mostly involving Duke and The Baroness (Ana) and the two ninjas. These back story bits are lamentably boring, which brings me to a great summation of the story. When things aren't blowing up, this movie drags.
Part of the reason for this is the acting. It kind of runs back and forth between decent and laughably bad. Channing Tatum plays Duke, the real All American Hero of the bunch. I like Tatum sometimes and don't like him other times. In Joe, he sorta falls right in the middle. It wasn't a bad acting job, but there weren't any stand up WOW moments either. Dennis Quaid played General Hawk, and was just bad at it. It seemed to me like he had the wrong expression on his face pretty much every second he was on camera. It was like he wanted to just burst out into giggling fits... the "I can't believe to I took this job" kind of giggling fits. Sianna Miller (Ana) and Rachel Nichols (Scarlett) provide the movie's eye candy without providing much in the way of substance.
Of the whole bunch, my favorite actor here was Ray Park. Folks may remember him as Darth Maul from Star Wars Episode 1. In Joe, he plays Snake Eyes, covered head to toe in black, and he doesn't say a word the entire movie. His costume definitely could have done without the lips though. Also, Byung-hun Lee plays the other ninja, Storm Shadow. Together with Ray Park, he put on some silly awesome fight scenes. Their story was the only back story I found myself interested in, and I'd be fine if they made the next G.I. Joe movie about those two only.
Yet, not all the blame for a bad story (or lack of interest in said story) can be placed on the actors. The writing in this movie is trash. The script is chock full of dense one-liners that made my very soul hurt with their idiocy and/or cliched nature. Many of the lines were awkward, particularly in the more mushy parts, and many times I found myself scratching my head wondering if people actually spoke such mindless things as often as this troop did.
Way back when I first posted the trailer for this movie on my blog, I said that I was worried that the movie would be a special effects bonanza without much in the way of storyline. So, the storyline was definitely shabby at best, so what about the special effects?
I tried for a while to find a nicer way to put this, but I really can't. The CGI in this movie looks like it was ripped straight out of one of those SyFy original movies. Invasion of the Killer Ants or some such. It was atrocious. I could see every blue screened shot, pick out every fake bolt of lightning or explosion. Nothing looked even remotely realistic. Take, for example, the G6 accelerator suits (read: Halo's MJOLNIR armor). Even in the fastest-paced scenes, I could clearly see how Channing Tatum's face was digitally pasted onto the helmet's visor. Utterly lame. It's been a good few years since I've seen CGI that bad out of a summer blockbuster, and I hope I never have to see it again.
Which leaves us with the action. This was the movie's saving grace. the action was fun. The explosions looked fake as hell, but it was fun watching everything blow up. The fighting took place against an obvious green screen, but hey, it was cool to watch it happen. The ninja fights really stole the show, though. I could have watched those parts for 2 hours, and this movie would have gotten a better score out of me. Paramount, if there's going to be a sequel to this movie (there is, it's already been announced), please take note: MORE NINJAS.
That's not to say the action was all hunky-dory. It wasn't. My most bitter complaint with the action was the silly and stupid use of slow-mo to try to heighten the tension... or something. Stephen Sommers (the director) apparently thought random bits of slow motion are really cool and decided to go to town with the effect. I'm OK with a bit of Matrix style in movies where appropriate, but there was no sense to the bits that got the slow-mo treatment (an explosion here, a missile there), so it aggravated me every time it happened.
Also, next time you are making a score for a military movie, find somebody who knows how to write military themes like Steve Jablonsky or Brian Tyler or somebody. Alan Silvestri's score for this movie was much like Dennis Quaid's facial expressions... just wrong.
There was one other thing this movie did wrong. Marketing. The movie suffered from some of the worst marketing I've seen leading up to a movie's release. The trailers were mind numbing, the TV spots were unexciting, the banners all over websites were equally uninspiring. Paramount decided it would be fun to not let critics see the movie early, then promptly released TV commercials with some of the nicer comments from the critics the day after the movie released. Lame... and slightly hypocritical considering the reasoning behind not releasing it early in the first place was because they wanted to let audiences, not critics, define the movie. While the marketing doesn't really affect the final movie, it is still notable as a failure. It also might have had something to do with the disappointing $56.2m the movie took in this weekend.
Anyway, the movie wasn't a complete bomb. It wasn't as bad as either Terminator or Wolverine, because it was at least fun. However, poor writing, mediocre acting, a bad score, transparent story, awful CGI, and idiotic slow-mo keep this movie from being anywhere near good. It was an entertaining waste of 2 hours, but I'd recommend waiting until you can rent this one. On standard DVD, because the special effect will be particularly fugly on Blu Ray. This is particularly sad, because the only time the movie is really enjoyable is when things are going BOOM.
Score: 4.0/10
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