G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) - Sommers tries to fire up Hasbro's second, less interesting movie venture

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A sexually suggestive, fire-and-ice-color-schemed concept define this character-filled poster for Stephen Sommers' G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

A team of international, secret super-soldiers, the G.I. Joes, get their work cut out for them, when a new so-called nanomite weapon gets stolen by its very evil, Scottish manufacturer.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, based on the Hasbro comic strip series which began in 1942 and the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero action figure toyline (1982-94), is written by Stuart Beattie (I, Frankenstein (2014)), David Elliot and Paul Lovett (Four Brothers (2005), both), with Michael B. Gordon (300 (2006)) and director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy (1999)) contributing story elements. 
The completely idea-vacuumed Joe universe only becomes less engaging from the fact that is consists of an enormous ensemble of characters who are all one-sided and colorless. Channing Tatum's (Stop-Loss (2008)) cheating 'hero' characters takes the cake. Marlon Wayans (The Ladykillers (2004)) and Byung-hun Lee (The Influence/In-peul-loo-eon-seu (2010)) have charm and improve matters some.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is a huge-budgeted monstrosity; SPOILER in its almost constant barrage of mostly CGI-based action, the scene of the destruction of the Eiffel Tower of Paris was, to my eyes, a spectacle. But it can't change, however, that this is a braindead dud.

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Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 175 mil. $
Box office: 302.4 mil. $
= Big flop
[G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra premiered 27 July (Tokyo) and runs 118 minutes. The film had been in development for about a decade and only moved into production following the success of Hasbro's first feature franchise, Transformers (2007). Shooting took place from February - June 2008 in California, including Los Angeles, the Arctic, the Czech Republic, including in Prague, in Tokyo, Japan and Paris, France. The film opened #1 to a 54.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent its first 4 weeks in the top 5 (#1-#2-#3-#5) and grossed 150.2 mil. $ (49.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were South Korea with 15.9 mil. $ (5.3 %) and the UK with 10.3 mil. $ (3.4 %). Roger Ebert gave the film 1.5/4 stars, translating to a star harder than this review. The film was nominated for 6 Razzie awards, winning one for Sienna Miller as Worst Supporting Actress. Though the huge-budgeted movie didn't recoup its costs theatrically, it undoubtedly sold plenty of tie-in merchandise. In its first week of home video release in North America, it grossed 40.9 mil. $ from sale of 2.5 mil. discs. A 2013 sequel, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, was also critically panned but made more financially smart, grossing 375 mil. $ on a 'mere' 93 mil. $ budget. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is rotten at 35 % with a 4.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra?

The Heat (2013) or, Prissy and Offensive in Boston

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1980s retro-styled, super-packed poster for Paul Feig's The Heat

 

Sandra Bullock (Miss Congeniality (2000)) and Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids (2011)) star as an unlikely cop team, one an up-tight, unpopular but professional FBI-agent from New York and the other a street-wise, dangerous and profane Boston cop. Together they are put together to put an end to a drug lord in Boston.

 
The Heat has earned many differing reactions, from wild praise to death threats. Its writer, Katie Dippold (Parks and Recreation (2009-2012)) wanted to make a cop buddy action-comedy in the style of Running Scared (1986) and Lethal Weapon (1987), but with women in the main parts. The result is a sometimes funny, and never action-fueled with excitement movie that is unlike said films because of the grotesqueness of the events and dialog in it. It is closer to the Bad Boys films, but still something very different, more outrageous and less of an action film.
A lot of the humor of The Heat comes from its American inside running gag of a Europe-aligned, modern New-Yorker pitched against an old-USA, Republican, gun-crazed Bostonian cop. This aspect is lost on many people outside of the US, and naturally the film was way bigger in the States than anywhere else.
Great Michigander filmmaker, director Paul Feig's (Bridesmaids (2010)) choice of music for The Heat underlines its outrageousness, being a loud mix of mostly clubbing and dirty hiphop tunes that smash into your ears like beef pompoms.
Marlon Wayans (Respect (2021)) acts as an awkward office commodity in the film, simultaneously looking insulted at and trying to flirt with Bullock's agent Ashburn. The rest of the supporting characters are mostly as thin and unsound as his. That is a problem.
The story never surprises in any way. That opposite type cop characters must partner up and eventually bond is more or less the main convention in the buddy movie sub-genre, and The Heat stays true to it. But around this, nothing new happens, crime or detective-wise. Only the bar scene (and all the other scenes, really) have gotten more outrageous, as this buddy cop comedy aims to ironize the genre while performing in its arena. McCarthy as Mullins gets her laughs from a (sometimes creative) 'insult-everyone'-strategy, while Bullock gets laughs mostly as a pawn for her bossy partner, as when she gets an involuntary make-over in a club bathroom, or when she steps up and becomes outrageous herself, like when she performs throat surgery on a man in a restaurant, who just has some pancake stuck in his mouth, or when she yells at a colleague for using his smartphone, while she's talking, - both funny moments in the film.
I don't have any problems with the buddy cop film being invaded by women here or the fact that The Heat doesn't want to have any romantic element, but then its action and cop plot elements have to work a lot better than they do. The problem is that the film wants to participate in a genre and poke fun at it at the same time.

Mullins' family, headed by her troubled brother (Michael Rapaport (Chuck (2016))) are the civilians we have to hope make it through the crime surge in the film. While some of the very dysfunctional family scenes are quite funny, they don't work in this part. Who cares if these idiots to make it?

 

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1999 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

Freaks and Geeks - season 1 (1999) - Feig and Apatow end the 90s with a great youth show 

 

 

Watch a 1-minute clip from the film here

Cost: 43 mil. $
Box office: 229.9 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 5.34 times its cost)

[The Heat premiered 23 June (New York) and runs 117 minutes. Co-producer Peter Chernin bought Dippold's script for 600k $. Bullock was paid 10 mil. $ for her performance; McCarthy 2.5 mil. $. Shooting took place from July - September 2012 in Massachusetts, including in Boston. The film opened #2, behind holdover hit Monsters University, to a 39.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weekends in the top 5 (#3-#4), grossing 159.5 mil. $ (69.4 %). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Australia with 13.4 mil. $ (5.8 %) and the UK with 11.2 mil. $ (4.9 %). Talks of a sequel have not materialized. Feig returned with People in New Jersey (2013, TV movie) and theatrically with Spy (2015). Bullock returned in Gravity (2013); McCarthy in Tammy (2014). The Heat is fresh at 66 % with a 6.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Heat?