G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: It's okay to admit when you are wrong

The elite multi-national military unit known as G.I. Joe is tasked with fighting to save the day at any cost. However the threat they face in the form of the nefarious arms dealer James McCullen and his shadowy partner The Doctor (a.k.a. Cobra Commander) might be even more than the Joes can handle.

After seeing the trailers for this film, I was thoroughly convinced it would be the worse thing to hit theaters since the last stinker Stephen Sommers (who directed the film) unleashed (the infamous Van Helsing). And while the story was overburdened with too many subplots regarding the different characters and their origins (did we really need the backstory of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow’s pasts?), the narrative contained no clear direction and the CGI was laughably awful at points (the accelerator suites looked like rejects from Stark Industries and I can hear people complaining even now about how the ice sunk in the climatic final battle between the Joes and Cobra), G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was surprisingly easy to get sucked into and watch due to its non-stop action. Another aspect that aided in its watchability was the absorbing storyline of the tragic past between Duke and the Baroness which not only held the audience’s attention, but also kept the film moving and allowed Sienna Miller (the Baroness) the chance to give a tremendously over the top and entertaining performance. She simply reveled in being the bad girl, chewing up every scene she was in with a devious smile and delight that the other actors seemed to lack.

It is certainly never going to win any kind of serious film awards but if you turn off your mind and remember that you are watching a film based off of a 1980’s children’s cartoon, then you should be able to enjoy G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra for its action, outlandishness and escapism.

Grade: C+

Van Helsing: (or the reason why I'm not going to catch the new G.I. Joe movie)

It was recently brought to my attention that, for the most part, I give high marks to most of the films I review. I guess I've had the good fortune to watch good movies so far but trust me, I do not intend to rubber stamp every film that I run across. By a bizarre coincidence (go figure), the film I'm about to discuss is one of those that deserves to be thrown under the bus. And that's a shame because it's directed by the guy who directed the soon to be release G.I. Joe movie.

Written and directed by the same man, Stephen Sommers, who created The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing is the story of a man without a past who roams the earth ridding it of monsters. After successfully dealing with one, the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde monster, in the beginning Van Helsing and his weapons man Karl are sent to Transylvania to hunt down Dracula and protect a local princess named Anna. Not only does Van Helsing have to deal with Dracula, but his three brides, Frankenstein, Igor, and the Wolf Man as well (I guess the Invisible Man and the Mummy were busy elsewhere and couldn’t get in on the action).

For all the millions of dollars spent on this film one would believe that the special effects would look spectacular, but this is not the case. It’s hard to be scared of monsters that look many pixels short of completion. Sommers ran into this same problem with the effects work in The Mummy Returns but apparently didn’t see fit to tell the effects guys to correct it. There was no coherence to the story. The characters and any kind of backstory or relationships they may have were never really explored due to the time needed for the next bit of action. We are told of Van Helsing’s mission but never really understand why Dracula was doing what he was doing. And any flow the story started to develop was bogged down by big, loud action pieces with bad CGI. Some people, myself included, might object to the misuse of the monsters in the film. Sommers was given free reign to use most of the Universal (movie studio) monsters but never should have been for he twisted the classic characters that most people recognize into bad caricatures. Dracula became some Eurotrash wiener who’d rather do his best Lionel Ritchie impersonation of walking on the ceiling rather than emote evil. One wonders if he’d scare a five year old. Frankenstein was turned into a pontificating wuss. He spent most of his time on screen quoting the Bible or whining about how “all is lost.” It felt as if Sommers had all of these great ideas for action pieces in mind and wanted to get them all into the final cut but he forgot that he needed to have a story that could match his vision. The utter ridiculousness of the story, lousy dialogue and amateurish special effects make this move a big waste of time and one prays that it's not the same for G.I. Joe (but if you've seen the trailer, you're pretty much resigned to the fact that it is).

Grade: D