G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

An elite military team takes on an arms merchant (Christopher Eccleston) with world-domination ambitions. The latest movie based on a Hasbro toy is marginally better than the Transformers franchise (not that the bar was all that high), and the result is slightly more enjoyable junk. The characters are stick figures with which the actors can do little—not Dennis Quaid nor Sienna Miller, Marlon Wayans or (least of all) Channing Tatum, the stickiest figure of them all. Director Stephen Sommers’ digital effects have their cheesy boys-and-their-toys charm (elaborately realistic while being quite unconvincing), but the whole movie is a setup for the sequel, leaving all the villains alive (plus one the good guys don’t know about). It’s a bait-and-switch sucker punch: You just blew nine bucks on a prologue.