Review: GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

It only took me a week. Did my best to avoid any spoilers. Enjoy:
I'll be honest, it was rough right from the beginning. GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra enters into the action with a US Army caravan that is transporting some high tech weaponry under the cover of night, and is armed to the teeth, fully expecting that someone will be trying to stop them. In the lead vehicle, Duke (Channing Tatum) and Rip Cord (Marlon Wayans) converse in what I'm sure was supposed to be witty banter. Wayans is a comedian and a pretty good actor, so he of course holds his own. The problem with the scene is that Channing Tatum can't act his way out of a wet paper bag. He sits statue still, stares at Wayans, and races through lines like a nervous five-year-old in a kindergarten play, all the while trying to hold down his wangster accent like he was taught to speak by Vanilla Ice himself. It's brutal to sit through. It wouldn't be as bad if it weren't right at the beginning of the movie. By the end of the flick I had accepted Tatum as Duke, and found that he didn't bother me nearly as much. It was, however, a tough way to begin a movie that I was hoping for a lot from.
I was very pleased to discover, though, that this scene was the low point of the movie.
All of the other actors were servicable, which is really all you can ask from an action flick. Channing Tatum is very good in the action scenes, and a pretty handsome fella to boot (plus, in the movie he has a scar on his right cheek bone just like mine, so guess what I'm being for Halloween?), so as long as he's not talking it's not so bad. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Christopher Eccleston are definitely the best actors in the film and make great villains.
If you really get into the ins and outs of the plot there are a few holes, but ultimately it's vintage GI Joe. Director Stephen Sommers does a phenomenal job of giving the audience just enough backstory to make the primary narrative a little more meaningful, but avoids going over the top. The trend in today's action movies is to make them two-and-a-half hours long by adding way too much sappy backstory that no one really cares about. This flick clocks in at just under two hours, and flies by in what seems like half of that.
It's important to note going in, that in order to enjoy this you're going to have to suspend some of your disbelief. The story and action are a little over the top. A lot of the CGI is sort of stylistically cartoony to emphasize the alternate reality of it all. If you watch as the disillusioned adult that we all are, you most likely are not going to have that much fun. But, if you can remember why you liked GI Joe in the first place (Cool vehicles, huge underground bases, jet packs, karate), then you can't NOT have a good time watching this movie.
I give it a 3 out of 4, and really hope they make a sequel.