A disjointed exercise in cosplay action theatrics that evidences the worst instincts of cobbled-together Hollywood overindulgence, G.I. Joe: Retaliation by and large ditches the characters of its first big screen iteration, 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, in favor of a new story of square-jawed elite military defense against terrorism. It may well make a good chunk of money, but it’s hard to imagine anyone getting particularly, legitimately passionate about this flick, which awkwardly attempts to service both nostalgia and the uninvested interest of newcomers, to generally yawning effect.



The film picks up after events of The Rise of Cobra, though it’s not exactingly rigid in its adherence to canon, given the significant turnover in cast. After Duke (Channing Tatum) leads the elite military Joes in securing a loose nuclear weapon from a destabilized Pakistan, they’re framed by Zartan, who’s still impersonating the President of the United States (Jonathan Pryce), and working on a scheme for terrorist organization Cobra. After Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) and Firefly (Ray Stevenson) break Cobra Commander out of his state of suspended imprisonment, the latter promptly resumes focus on world enslavement.

Standing in Cobra’s way are Roadblock (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), Flint (D.J. Cotrona) and Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palicki), who try to first unravel the conspiracy surrounding their framing and then extract proper revenge for their fallen comrades. Enlisting the assistance of the “original Joe,” General Colton (Bruce Willis, always looking like he just woke up), these Joes craft a strongly worded treatise appealing to the Cobra Commander’s core human decency. Nah… just kidding. Stuff gets blowed up good!

Screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick labor to awkwardly fold in source material mythology, as it relates to both a mission by Jinx (Elodie Yung) and Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Storm Shadow’s disillusionment with Cobra, but this chiefly results in a lot of clunky, hilarious scenes in which RZA shows up as Blind Master, and butchers a bunch of already gracelessly expository dialogue.

Forgetting for a moment the movie’s many slick but false moves, and the manner in which it contrives to put Palicki in first workout clothes and then a cocktail dress, what’s most notable about Retaliation is the litany of small indignities it foists upon its big-stakes, wham-bang conceit, like the fact that the American President’s national popularity is said to soar after, in the wake of a nuke going missing, he decides to push for a worldwide nuclear disarmament summit; or that Israel — who’s never officially admitted to possessing nuclear weapons — is part of the gathering, along with global pariah North Korea. Forget the intellectual heavy lifting of any cogent write-around that might serve its story; time and time again, Retaliation opts for whatever’s easy and convenient, sense be damned.

If the movie was proportionately staked (instead of the entirety of London being destroyed) and just more fun, that might work. Director Jon Chu is a gifted visual filmmaker, and in Step Up 2 the Streets and then Step Up 3D he showed a nice handle on action choreography. Here, however, Chu’s gifts are handcuffed, and less evident. He has a lot of fun with a balletic, vertical, mountainside chase-and-swordfight sequence that summons memories of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But while Chu orchestrates action sequences with a certain zest, Retaliation‘s scenes too frequently lack a properly delineated space.

When, in the movie’s final siege, Roadblock tabs himself to handle “the perimeter,” it sets up a discrete, rampaging tank sequence that doesn’t cut together well at all with the rest of the Joes’ attack. (Maybe this was part of the movie’s purported re-shoots.) And when Roadblock takes on Firefly, the confrontation goes from land to sea and then land again, culminating in a silly, combination fistfight-firefight, where each party occasionally elects to throw punches with a loaded weapon.

The Rock provides a suitable steely yet wry charisma as Roadblock, and he and Tatum have a nice rapport while it lasts. But other characters are complete ciphers, and Cotrona and Palicki are wan substitutes for any of a number of cast members from the first film, which offers up more punchy fun than this sequel. Maybe if there were more of a sense of actual nefarious plotting, G.I. Joe: Retaliation might have a more legitimate scope, and a bit of the grand, army-versus-army feeling of something like The Avengers. Instead, it’s just another loud action movie, but not one particularly marked by any memorable catharsis. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Paramount, PG-13, 110 minutes)

Muriel’s Wedding director PJ Hogan and star Toni Collette reunite to considerably less winning effect with Mental, a mad, garrulous little slice of alt-nanny comedy. As imaginative as it is indefatigable, the film nonetheless puts an overall unconvincingly quirky Australian spin on fractured-family mental health movies like Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck‘s It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Dustin Lance Black’s Virginia and Ryan Murphy’s 2006 adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. All three of those tales, among many others, take inspiration from memoirs of coming-of-age amidst mental illness, and touch on parentalized adolescents. Mental tries to mine that same terrain for both laughs and drama, but comes across as just frenzied and bipolar.

Unhappy housewife Shirley Moochmore (Rebecca Gibney) copes with the lack of support and perpetual absence of her small town mayor husband Barry (Anthony LaPaglia) by withdrawing into a fantasy world built around The Sound of Music and the happy Von Trapp family. Her five girls are certain she’s nuts, and that they’re not far behind — one self-diagnoses as schizophrenic, the other as a sociopath. Barry finally commits Shirley to a mental institution for a stint of indeterminate length. But since he hardly knows his daughters’ names much less how to relate to them, he picks up an eccentric hitchhiker, Shaz (Collette), and tasks her with becoming their nanny and controlling them. Much scene-chewing then ensues, as Shaz, like a foul-mouthed, Mad Hatter Mary Poppins, upends both the girls’ lives as well as their views and opinions of themselves.

Hogan, whose Stateside studio filmography includes My Best Friend’s Wedding and Confessions of a Shopaholic, has a colorful pop sensibility which trends decidedly toward the manic, and that’s part of his undoing here. Mental has a wild, live-wire energy, and comes out of the gate like a freight train; it’s the sort of movie that uses the foleyed sound of a cuckoo clock to underscore a point. The problem is that this full-frontal assault is a bit wearying, and it creates an emotional disconnect that widens to a chasm when, 45 minutes in, the film tries to pivot into more baldly melodramatic territory. There’s no honest attachment to the characters, so Mental‘s plays at sympathy ring hollow — if always loudly.

There is some funny material here, including the forced familial freak-out of an uptight neighbor and a scene where Shaz holds forth on Australia’s history as a penal colony and how, while there are certain “control mice” (Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe) sent abroad to play nice, most of the entire country is actually insane. But Hogan, in trying to cram in as many autobiographical details and strands as possible, overloads Mental, including a needlessly complicated subplot involving the avuncular shark adventurer boss, Trevor Blundell (Liev Schreiber), of skittish oldest daughter Coral (Lily Sullivan). Putting a bow on Shaz’s personal history isn’t a necessity, but down that rabbit hole Hogan ill-advisedly goes.

As Shaz, Collette is a total, gum-smacking force of nature. If there was an Aussie Erin Brockovich giving an audition for a Down Under production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I’d like to see her top this. But Mental so prizes sound and fury over rigorous and clear plotting that even Collette can’t off the dramatic lift for which Hogan aims with his third act. Still, if one wants to see the actress light a fart on fire, this may be the only chance they get. Plan accordingly. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Dada Films/Arclight Films, R, 116 minutes)