HAVING LOW EXPECTATIONS CAN WORK OUT

G.I. JOE did not suck. For me, that's a glorious statement for several reasons: 1) Tthis was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid. I had the toys (still have some of them) and I played the wheels off them. I relished the war element of the soldiers defending our country. 2) I like mindless action flicks. 3) Snake Eyes was so cool.

The trailers killed any interest in seeing the movie in the theaters. I knew better than to waste good money on it. The review simply secured my belief that the movie was flotsam. As it turned out, that low expectation worked out well for me. Knowing full well it had a 30-some percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes I was prepared for a horrible script and worthless action. What I got was a bad script with decent action. Some of the action was too long and pointless, the characters cardboard cutouts, stupid disability stereotypes (i.e. people with facial scaring always turn out evil and hate the world), and a poorly thought-out script. The good side was that it exceeded my tanking expectation enough that the movie did not suck ... too much.

So I enjoyed it, even if it was a goofy movie. It did occur to me that the current generation might see this movie as I saw PREDATOR. I look back and see quite a bit of stupidity there, but it is a movie that appeals to my childhood fantasies. It had that cool rotary 50 caliber Gatling gun. Perhaps G.I. JOE is the same?

So I watched it. Don't hold that against me. I didn't spend much money on it (thank you Netflix) and I didn't drag my wife and daughter to it. I waited until they had something to do before watching it. I might be inclined to give it 3 stars for entertaining me throughout most of the movie; the ending was too long. Script might get 1 star – maybe 2. It could have been worse. I could have watched  TWILIGHT or some damn romance movie with Hugh Grant.