On my last free day for the next few months, I hurried to the movie theater, determined to squeeze in a double-header. To my chagrin, the best I could do was District 9 and the live-action version of G.I. Joe. Half of that double dip disappointed, and if you've read my reaction to District 9, then you know how this review is going to go.

I almost left the theater at the ten-minute, twenty-minute, and thirty-minute marks of G.I. Joe. But by then, I figured it couldn't get any worse, and I had dropped $7.50 on sitting in the cool of the air conditioning. The film is completely driven by characters with "cool" names and different "skills," various means of transportation which are all certainly available for purchase in their toy replica formats, and a wide variety of CGI scenes that would make a fan of Die Another Day wince.

Now, I'm sure if you were a fan of G.I. Joe growing up, then you love the flick. I've read all the comic books, played with a few of the figures (the aircraft carrier was sweet), and I was really looking forward to Snake Eyes. But the character with the most character was the one who finally becomes Cobra Commander (I won't reveal the spoiler!) and of course, he's the bad guy. The film sports Dennis Quaid, Marlon Wayans (steals every scene), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (of Lost), Said Taghmaoui, Chris Eccleston, and Jordan Gordon-Hewitt, but gets comparable to Stephen Sommer's Van Helsing, rather than the cult hit, The Mummy.

Content with slinging forced one-liners, "knowing is half the battle" and "he's a real American hero," the movie settles (in ways that Transformers, Batman Begins, Spiderman, Superman Returns, and others didn't) in rebooting franchises. Even the dreadful Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was better than this! But in true X-Men fashion, this one leaves the shapeshifter in the Oval Office and lingering doubts about the stability of America. And of course, the stars are under contract for a sequel.

So, can we learn anything from this one? I'm doubtful. It did bother me that each of the soldiers in Cobra's army are really brainwashed, controlled by nanotechnology. How "cool" is it for the Joes to waste everyone and no one seems concerned about the bad guys who aren't really bad guys at all? Unless you're a main character of course. It honestly left me thinking that maybe my parents' condemnation of G.I. Joe when I was a child was right: it praises war without worrying about who gets hurt.

This toy was better left in the wrapper.