G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

The would-be franchise starter G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra gets points for being less hateful than the Transformers pictures, even while employing a similarly dispiriting formula. It’s even occasionally entertaining, but that sensation wears off pretty quick, as director Stephen Sommers (the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies) attempts to stretch a 21-minutes-plus-commercials concept into a two-hour film. Channing Tatum and Marlon Wayans play military grunts drafted into an elite, top-secret battalion after their squadron is ambushed by world-domination-bent weapons dealers. Coincidentally, all the good guys and bad guys know each other, and it’s in those torturous stretches of dialogue and exposition between laser fights that G.I. Joe loses its kung-fu grip on the audience. Your time would be better spent debating whether Sienna Miller looks hotter in her baroness black wig than following this mildewed story.