Overwrought G.I. Joe 'Everything You Could Want'

Most critics—who didn't have access to advance screenings, normally a huge red flag—agree that G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra isn’t anything but a popcorn flick. For some, that’s enough. For others, not so much.

• "It’s all put together with such verve and invention that resistance becomes futile," Tom Huddleston writes for Time Out London. "GI Joe is big, dumb, loud and utterly relentless: basically, everything you could ever want from a summer blockbuster."

• "This is the kind of film where baddies say, 'Now you die,' where friends say, 'You almost lost your life out there—you have a reason to be concerned,' and where gruff leaders growl, 'Let's do this,' Kyle Smith writes in the New York Post. "Let's not."
• The film is "edited as if the audience wouldn’t watch unless every scene were switched to overdrive," Richard Kuipers writes in Variety. Still, "while thesping is not the main game here, having a cast of bright young things certainly helps."

(More GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra stories.)