I've stayed away from movie reviews for as long as I've been able to. This has not been easy considering that I really do watch a lot of movies and I really do love talking about them. Today, while watching some SNL on Hulu I finally decided that I was going to take the "Bitch Pleeze" segment and do it one better. I'm going to actually give reasons why I have no desire to see a specific movie. I never say no to a free movie, so if I end up watching one of the movies that I profile on these posts I'll come up with an actual review. I will also post Roger Ebert's review of the films at the bottom after my prediction of how the film does. Again, I would like to make sure everybody understands, unless otherwise noted, I have not seen these movies. Hopefully these non-reviews save everybody some money or at the very least serves as a well timed 'I told you so' G.I. Joe : The Rise of Cobra is probably last on my list of movies to watch this summer. In fact, if I had started this column earlier this summer I would have listed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as one of my least expected movies of the summer and while that looked like a train wreck it looks like a masterpiece when compared to G.I. Joe. G.I. Joe, according to this movie, is a group of elite recruits from armed forces around the world. That is not the 'Real American Heroes' that I remember. Oh, they answer to the U.S. Government? Okay, whatever, lets forget that they're destroying my childhood with this 'multinational' stuff and carry on. The trailer shows the Eiffel tower being eaten at by some weird green thing and the members of the team in some kind of bionic suit. That seems like the making of some non-stop action movie... sadly I like my non-stop action with some silly story not just some rehash of Team America: World Police. Up until here you have a few things that are not great but definitely not anything catastrophic until you consider the finer points of the movie.
- The director Stephen Sommers directed the enjoyable The Mummy (1999) and then went to direct one of my most Unwatchable movies of all time Van Helsing.The flick has the lowest screening test scores in the history of Paramount (link)The director was fired from the movie and Stuart Baird (editor of Casino Royale) was brought in to try and salvage the film. (link)Producers later denied that Sommers had been fired from the movie but did not comment on if he had any say in the post-production process of the movie citing that the movie "tested very well". (link)The comedic relief is provided by Marlon Wayans, I dont think I need to link to any of his recent work.The film was not shown to critics before release (which is normally used to hype the movie... Another movie that did not do press screenings: Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds) (link)Google an image of Cobra.Rotten Tomatoes had a 41% after the first showings last night. Today it shows a 39% which might mean that audiences are not sticking forks into their eyes and are actually making it safe back to their computers in order to say how mediocre, derivative and redundant this movie is. (link)