Check your kids' closet for the latest hot Hollywood-movie franchise: G.I. Joe follows Transformers, and we're told that adaptations of Battleship and Candy Land are on the way. Too bad all the studios know how to do with the plastic boy action figures is prop them up with booming CGI FX, buff babes in Lycra, and an inane conspiracy theory (world domination through nanotechnology — yawn).
In the hands of director Stephen Sommers, who did better with the Mummy series, Joe looks like a cheap video game brightened by good actors (Dennis Quaid and Jonathan Pryce) in bit parts along the way. Taking one for the team are Channing Tatum as the dutiful soldier trying to save the world (but not the movie), Sienna Miller as his former love interest turned rogue commando for a nefarious military-industrial conglomerate, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the generic mad scientist. If only they'd brought Mr. Potato Head into the mix.
