Saturday, March 30, 2013

A SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON MOVIE


MOVIE REVIEW:
G.I. JOE: RETALIATION

Starring:

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

Adriana Palicki

Channing Tatum


G.I. Joe: Retaliation – Takes place years after the last movie, and from the last movie we know that a Cobra agent that goes by the name of, Zartan is disguised as the President of the United States. He ceased the opportunity of jeopardizing the existence of the G.I. Joes and let’s Cobra take over and wreak havoc around the globe.

I was very curious about G.I. Joe: Retaliation, I’m not very much a fan of the last G.I. Joe movie. I thought the movie took itself too seriously up to the point that the ideas of giving life to a toy line-turned cartoon didn’t execute very well. The movie instead became a really bad commercial for a toy line as it suffers from terrible direction and writing instead of putting actual fun for the movie. The previews did show that this movie did learn its lesson from the last movie but were all the lessons learned when this movie finally gracing our screens?

So the big question here is that “is this better than the last one?” I’m happy to say that the answer to that question is: yes -At some degree. This movie is a popcorn-movie at its best, it has that self-aware writing, over the top action that actually felt like a 3-part episode of G.I. Joe (the show), it wasn’t necessarily shitty or a great movie, it was the type of fun movie where you'd just "shut your brain off and just enjoy anything on screen" type of fun and If you go in expecting more than that you will be very disappointed.

There were still flaws from the last movie that did show on this one, there were jokes here and there that didn’t really work out, there were also un-needed scenes and some under-developed characters. The movie surprisingly did have a better story to tell though in the second act of the film there were a few stories where it made the movie feel convoluted and confusing by the second act. The second act drastically became slow probably because of the un-necessary dialogue at some point of the movie, they try to forcibly “humanize” some characters but they didn’t really do it very well as result the second act ended up having unnecessary scenes here and there. The movie did have a couple of re-shoots, which explains 9 months of it being delayed.

To be really quick on the performances and the characters, I thought there were some characters that had very little to do and it may be the writing’s fault. Cobra Commander in this movie was very under-developed that it felt like that he is someone in the background than a threat as if Destro would be in the tv show and yet Zartan in disguise as the president is a bigger threat and a very entertaining comical villain, he was so ludicrously cartoony that it actually felt like an early morning tv show villain. Bruce Willis’ Joe Colton was also under used; He’s also another character who is just there for the sake of being there. But there’s another one of these characters but he comes off as amusing and it is RZA, if you are disturbed than amused that a black rapper is a Japanese-speaking master (who goes around a scene talking with a Japanese accent) you will have a very difficult time when you watch his scenes (I laugh my ass off every time he talks). And then, we have a character called, Flint. Flint was a very uninteresting character in this movie, he barely had personality in this movie and it felt like that he wasn’t needed in this movie at all. To me they should’ve let Duke live and get him killed (Duke being killed off is not much of a secret because of the trailers) off instead. Then we have Adriana Palicki was just fine in this movie (Despite the fact that she looked like a Victoria’s Secret model than a female soldier). But last but not the least we have Dwayne Johnson; Dwayne Johnson is shaping up into a great modern-day action hero. It shows in this movie, he was probably the one who did shines in this movie.

With flaws aside, I enjoyed this movie for what it is. The action scenes got me entertained despite the fact that there was a long break of unnecessary dialogue in the middle of the movie. Every scene that has something to do with ninjas (except for ninja scenes of RZA) probably has the best action scenes in the movie. The movie was delayed for a 3D conversion and a series of re-shoots to do so but I got late for the 3D screening and I end up seeing it in 2D and I can tell from this movie that there aren’t really a lot of good shots to get for the 3D version. I don’t think it was necessary to do this in 3D and be released in its original release. In the end, G.I. Joe: Retaliation is almost everything the last movie should’ve been. It has enjoyable action like the last one but it adopts that cartoony tone in a good way and it doesn’t take itself really seriously, though the movie still had issues from the last movie. I recommend this movie when this movie hits at matinee price in 2D than 3D.

THE GOOD:

+GREAT ACTION
+SOME CHARACTERS DID SHINE
+A WELL HANDLED CARTOONY TONE
+RZA WAS UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS

THE BAD:

-SOME TERRIBLE WRITING
 -SOME TERRIBLE DIALGOUE
-UNDER-DEVELOPED CHARACTERS
-REALLY SLOW MOMENTS
-UNNECESSARY MOMENTS

MY RATING:
3/5 - NOT THAT BAD, NOT THAT GOOD

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