If you recall, earlier in the summer I spoke about how I felt I was out of the GI JOE demographic and I felt terrible for not wanting to see it. Well I guess I couldn't live with myself because under the cover of dahkness I rented it from netflix. So, after a totally un-successful weekend campaign to convince my friends to watch G.I. Joe, I was forced to finish the film by myself on a small screen as the hours of the weekend waned away on Sunday night.
What I found surprised me, not in a "wow, this movie is going to win best picture way" but more in a "this is one of the most bat-shit crazy movies I've ever seen way." It's full of wild destruction of landmarks, secret underwater bases in the the Sahara, and cameos from people from "The Mummy" movies, and yes I'm talking about Brendan Frasier and ImmmmmoooooTep. The action was reasonably well directed, Stephen Sommers has stepped his game up since "Van Helsing," but the whole thing just felt very surreal.
It hovered in a space between violent and cartoon spectacle, which is exactly where you don't want to be. "Transformers" is all spectacle, "Saving Private Ryan" is all violent, and this is like Saving Private Ryan, but with evil sharks and nanotechnology robots eating people's brains. So I guess, my initial gut reaction was correct, I should have avoided GI JOE, it just was too much for me. And now that I'm old, I can't handle it all.
Yeah, except ice floats. Think about it.
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