GI Joe: Retaliation is pretty bad. You don't need me to tell you that. It's not completely horrible: There's a cool sequence involving ninjas fighting each other during an avalanche, one special effects scene has London blowing up real awesome-like, and The Rock continues to be the one consistent action star presence we have anymore. (He wears his charm with unusual lightness.) It's still terrible.
I was going to do a whole review of this and everything, but it's already playing in theaters, and if you're planning on waiting in line to see it tonight, at this point, there isn't much I can do to stop you. Instead, I just decided to quote the eight worst lines from the film. I'm not sure if this is helpful or not, but there were so many that were so awful that I had to take out my notebook and write them down, lest I some day be subpoenaed and need physical proof to back me up. You can watch London explode in the trailer, you can watch The Rock in better movies like Snitch, and you can just follow along with these lines, and you'll get the full GI Joe: Retaliation experience.
8. "There's only one man who could authorize a strike like that. And I voted for him." In the film, the president (Jonathan Pryce) has been kidnapped and is being impersonated by one of Cobra Command's flunkies. As one does.
7. "Sorry for the delay. The director was running behind."
[smirk] "He won't be running anywhere anytime soon." (Because he's dead now.)
6. "They call it a waterboard, but man, I never get bored."
5. "I'm Amy Vandervoort from Fox News."
"Of course it's Fox News. That's why you look so fair and balanced." I'm pretty sure I made this joke in the green room of Red Eye once.
4. "You feel so much hate that you stop feeling it at all, like a fish not knowing it's in water." I don't think I understand what this means.
3. "I'm the quicker-blower-upper." Someone was paid for writing this.
2. "I'm not here to sell you anything. Well, maybe hopelessness." The worst part about this one is that it's delivered by Walton Goggins, aka Boyd Crowder.
1. "The Joes are out of the picture. And by 'out of the picture,' I mean, 'out of this earth.'" Because they're dead.
I'm sorry, that's all you're getting out of me on this one. Sometimes writing about movies seems kind of dumb.
Grierson & Leitch is a regular column about the movies. Follow us on Twitter, @griersonleitch.