I can’t smoke pot at home anymore because a cartoon fireman told me not to once. So I do it at the movies. This week: the action figures of Hasbro come alive in G.I. Joe: Retaliation.
Movies based on toys can be OK but people really need to remember that they’re just toys. All of the Transformers movies have been stupid and bad because Michael Bay didn’t get that. He tried to make them big and real and scary and lifelike and it didn’t work. I think that G.I. Joe: Retaliation is the best toy movie anybody’s made yet because it takes these actors and treats them like action figures.
A kid could have written this movie and I mean that in the best way. Remember when you were a kid and you played with your Joes and it took like an ENTIRE DAY, like first the Joes had to go on a mission and then they got captured and double-crossed and the Baroness tortured Lady Jaye until you felt funny and then you went and had lunch and then there was a rescue mission and then a volcano erupted and then..? This movie feels like that. Stuff just keeps happening and even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense, it doesn’t really matter.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation is what a lot of modern action movies isn’t: fun. The guy who directed it came in and said “listen, we’re making a movie about plastic fightmen. Let’s just go nanners with it.” So we have ninja fights and weird-looking tanks and Walton Goggins as a prison warden and a good ninja who wears black and a bad ninja who wears white and then the bad ninja turns good (SPOILERS!) and and and…
The cast is plenty fun. The Rock was basically born to play Roadblock. Jonathan Pryce eats all the scenery as Zartan. Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis, because who the F else do you think he’s going to be?
You should see this movie. It was great high. I felt like a dumb-ass little kid with like two friends again. I could almost taste my braces. Highly recommended.