However, I was dead wrong about which one would be an achiever and which would be a loser.

(1)  The Final Destination ($28.3 million, $9079 per screen):  This, frankly, is a bit stunning.  Not only did it trounce the Rob Zombie movie, it also handily beat the openings of the first three films in its own series … without having one single star in the cast.

Is there any doubt left that 3D can be a big draw?

(2)  Inglourious Basterds ($20 million, $6332 per screen, $73.7 million total):  Here’s an interesting fact.  This movie’s gross on Friday was down about 60% from its Friday gross last week, which is usually a sign of doom and gloom.  However, the weekend overall ended up being down only 47% from last weekend, which is a big turnaround from that second Friday.

What does this mean?

Well, who can say for sure, but it seems highly likely to me that it means the movie has good word of mouth among older audiences, who tend to go to the movies on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

They also tend — as we’ll see with at least one other movie further down the chart — to cause a movie to stick around for a number of weeks, so this might be excellent news for the long-term prospects for the Basterds.  Tarantino and Pitt (not to mention the Weinsteins) are undoubtedly smiling widely over this one.

(3)  Halloween II ($17.4 million, $5754 per screen):  A very disappointing opening, considering that the first film in Zombie’s series opened to nearly $30 million.  Clearly, this movie was the victim both of disdain for the first movie and of the unexpectedly stout competition from The Final Destination.

I’d guess it’ll be a while before Hollywood opens two same-genre films on the same weekend agaain.

The budget on this movie was apparently only $15 million, so nobody will lose any money on the deal.  Still, a disappointment.

(4)  District 9 ($10.7 million, $3365 per screen, $90.8 million total):  Down 41% this weekend, it’s another good performance from the Blomkamp flick, which is now a lock to make $100 million.

(5)  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($8 million, $2307 per screen, $132,4 million total):  Down 35%, which isn’t bad, I continue to be fairly impressed by how well this movie is doing.  Not a huge hit, by any means, but it’s doing similarly reobust business overseas, which probably means a sequel is a go.

(6)  Julie & Julia ($7.4 million, $2956 per screen, $70.9 million total):  Word of mouth continues to propel this movie into strong business.  It dropped only 16% this weekend, and I’m now starting to wonder if that magic — and mostly meaningless — plateau of $100 million isn’t doable, after all.  As I mentioned earlier, movies that really entertain older audiences tend to have long shelf lives, and if you want a great argument for that fact, look no further than this movie.

(7)  The Time Traveler’s Wife ($6.7 million, $2278 per screen, $48.1 million total):  This movie is also holding up well, and while Eric Bana can’t quite claim to be a box-office star yet, it’s clear that he still has potential.

(8)  Shorts ($4.8 million, $1568 per screen, $13.5 million total):  There isn’t much kiddie business to be had during this part of the summer, but this movie dropped only 24%, which is at least a mild rebound from a poor opening weekend.

(9)  Taking Woodstock ($3.7 million, $2691 per screen):  Not good.  Clearly, nobody much cared to see a movie about Woodstock that wasn’t really about Woodstock.

(10)  G-Force ($2.8 million, $1477 per screen, $111.8 million total):  If Disney World ever opens a ride based on this movie, I’m gonna crap in its doorway.

Elsewhere on the charts, there was another strong late-run performance from Harry Potter; the sixth film in the series is up to $294 million, and seems likely to hit the $300 million mark, which will make it the most successful entry since the first one.  Looks like those IMAX screens were pretty darn helpful, after all.

Also, both (500) Days of Summer and Ponyo continue to hold up well (dropping merely 9% and 19%, respectively).  Both films have proven to be very successful with the audiences they were aimed at.

Next weekend is Dragon*Con weekend for me, so this column will be taking a one-week hiatus.

Oh, well.  String theory suggests that I was right somewhere.

(1)  Inglourious Basterds ($37.6 million, $11,881 per screen):  Setting a new record for last-half-of-August opening weekends, this one is honestly a bit of a surprise to me.  Even more surprising is the fact that it played well throughout the weekend, rather than just opening big on Friday and then dying off by Sunday.

My guess is that you can credit Brad Pitt with a lot of this success, and the trailers for much of the rest.  I would wager that a lot of people saw their first Tarantino movie this weekend, and it’ll be interesting to see what next weekend looks like for the film.  It has been greeted with a certain amount of vitriol by a large segment of the fanboy community, but it may be that the film is playing well for people it wasn’t necessarily intended for.

I’m going to predict a 60% dropoff, which is large but not catastrophic.  Either way, it looks like Tarantino has successfully recovered from the box-office disappointment of Grindhouse.

(2)  District 9 ($18.9 million, $6197 per screen, $73.4 million total):  Dropping 50% this weekend, that’s a much softer decline than the somewhat similar Cloverfield suffered in its second weekend.  It looks as if people are embracing this movie fairly warmly; good news for all concerned, especially fans of original, high-quality science fiction films.

(3)  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($12.5 million, $3162 per screen, $120.5 million total):  Showing some signs of stability in its third weekend, the dumb-as-a-box-of-nail-clippings action flick has probably started to catch on as a family film.

(4)  The Time Traveler’s Wife ($10 million, $3355 per screen, $37.4 million total):  Down 46% this weekend, that’s a steeper drop than is common for romance films, and I think I know the reason why…

(5)  Julie & Julia ($9 million, $3654 per screen, $59.2 million total):  …Julie & Julia is finally showing some leg.  Dropping only 25% this weekend, the culinary-centric movie actually made more per screen than did The Time Traveler’s Wife.  Word of mouth seems to finally be getting around that Julie & Julia is a good time at the movie; I doubt it’s in time for the final gross to hit $100 million, but stranger things have happened.

(6)  Shorts ($6.6 million, $2126 per screen):  Debuting with a smaller per-screen average than the second weekend of Ponyo, Robert Rodriguez’s latest kidsploitation opus is a bona fide dud.  Robert, can you please cut this shit out now?  And by the way, thank you in advance for Machete.

(7)  G-Force ($4.2 million, $1642 per screen, $107.3 million total):  If were one of those hot True Blood vampires — not the faggy Twilight ones — I’d have bloody eye corners every time I had to write about this fucking movie.

(8)  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($3.5 million, $1816 per screen, $290.2 million total):  Continuing its solid run, can this movie squeak its way to $300 million?  It’s gonna be close.

(9)  The Ugly Truth ($2.8 million, $1446, $82.8 million total):  Good run, fine total, blah blah blah.

(10)  Post Grad ($2.8 million, $1429 per screen):  Not a good debut by any means.

Elsewhere on the chart:

(12)  Ponyo ($2.4 million, $2620 per screen, $8.1 million total):  Down 32% from last weekend, the Miyazaki import is doing fairly well.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this helps him become a bigger name here in America; I suspect a lot of people have been exposed to his work for the first time.

Next weekend is an odd one, with two high-profile horror flicks debuting simultaneously: Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 and The Final Destination, which really ought to have been titled Final Destination 4 3D.

The marketing for The Final Destination has been pretty soft, but it’s still a well-known franchise, and the lure of 3D could work again.  Overall, though, I’d say the weekend probably belongs to Zombie.  Let’s say $25 million, with the possibility of a repeat at the top for the Basterds.

(1)  District 9 ($37.3 million, $12,251 per screen):  Sony’s marketing department seems to have learned all the lessons there were to be learned from the successful opening of last year’s Cloverfield, and as a result, they got a pretty great opening weekend themselves.

It’s always impressive when a movie that is free of star actors opens well, and it’s doubly impressive when that movie isn’t based on a comic book or a bestselling novel or some other source with a built-in audience.  In this instance, it’s tempting to say that the star responsible for the successful launch is producer Peter Jackson; however, since his only hits were reliant not on his name but on the source material on which they were based, you can’t realistically say that the name “Peter Jackson” being on a poster is a name that guarantees ticket sales.

Instead, it appears that people responded to the trailers, which promised an inventive and substantial sci-fi action flick.  It’s an unmitigated triumph for director Neill Blomkamp, who will likely find himself in a situation to do whatever he wants to do next.

(2)  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($22.3 million, $5571 per screen, $98.5 million total):  Falling 60% from its opening weekend, Paramount nevertheless has a solid performer on their hands with this one, which probably won’t make $150 million, but will certainly make enough of a dent that a sequel might well be a good investment.  Nobody seems to genuinely like the film except people who wear sweatpants out to eat, but the reception for the film has been surprisingly decent, and I’d expect the film’s dropoffs to level off quite a bit from here on out.

(3)  The Time Traveler’s Wife ($18.6 million, $6233 per screen):  Not an especially terrific opening weekend, but it’s respectable enough.  It’s been a busy summer for Eric Bana, who — between Star Trek and Funny People and now this — has been in a slew of high-profile releases.  This is the only one that leaned on him as a lead, and the mixed results are indicative of the kind of career he’s having: good enough that he keeps getting work, but never quite good enough to push him into the next level.

The same might be said of co-star Rachel McAdams, who at one point seemed like she might turn into the next Julia Roberts circa 1995, but now seems like she might turn into the next Julia Roberts circa 2005.

(4)  Julie & Julia ($12 million, $5121 per screen, $43.3 million total):  Down a surprisingly hefty 40% this weekend, it seems unlikely that it’s going to be a big performer.  With the summer coming to an end and the glut of high-profile pics aimed at women slowing down, though, don’t be surprised if it starts picking up steam.

(5)  G-Force ($6.9 million, $2256 per screen, $99 million total):  In the dregs of a deep recession, America can still find $100 million dollars lying around to spend on the movie about a secret spy force of talking guinea pigs.

Motherfucker.

(6)  The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard ($5.6 million, $3070 per screen):  The moment I realized that I had no interest in seeing this movie was the moment I found out that the film’s title is not The Goods, but The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard.  Looks like America also couldn’t be bothered.  Looks like that boost from co-star Ed “The Hangover” Helms never happened.

(7)  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($5.1 million, $1855 per screen, $283.8 million total):  Factoring in inflation, it looks like this is one is going to be very marginally less successful than Order of the Phoenix.  I guess the series has gotten as popular as it’s going to get, but that’s proven to be pretty darn popular.

(8)  The Ugly Truth ($4.4 million, $1628 per screen, $77.4 million total):  Probably will only get one more weekend in the top ten, but it’s been a solid performer.

(9)  Ponyo ($3.5 million, $3868 per screen):  Making nearly twice what I expected it to make, you can’t quite call this movie a hit, but I don’t think it’s something anyone ought to feel ashamed of, either.  Miyazaki’s movies, apart from a cult crowd, have never caught on here in America, so the fact that (out of the top ten movies) Ponyo had the fifth-best per-screen average this weekend seems like a small triumph.  It’ll probably fade fast, but a final gross of close to $10 million is likely, and that’s not bad for a low-scale release like this one.

(10)  Funny People ($3 million, $1165 per screen, $47.9 million total):  Trust me, nobody at Universal thinks this is even the slightest bit funny.  The budget, according to Box Office Mojo, was $75 million.  Compare that to the $30 million spent on District 9, and try and figure out what good it did anybody to spend $75 million on this mess of a film.

Next weekend, it’s Tarantino versus Rodriguez, as both Inglourious Basterds and Shorts hit the screen.  Don’t be surprised if it’s neck-and-neck as to which one comes out on top.

Where you goin’, Judd Apatow?

(1)  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra ($56.2 million, $14.025 per screen):  We live in an era that can easily find a true blockbuster making around $56.2 million on its opening day, so it’s hard to be too impressed by this opening weekend.  On the other hand, it’s a decent enough rollout, and I won’t be the least bit surprised if it holds up relatively well over the next few weeks.  The movie seems to be entertaining the type of people who are likely to be entertained by a movie like this; they might well make it a genuine hit.

Is it just me, or does the movie kinda remind you of a feature-length version of one of those clips of films Vincent Chase is supposedly starring in on Entourage?  You know, you see those clips of Aquaman or Medellin and you’re not sure if you’re supposed to actually think they look awesome, or if you’re supposed to be kinda amused by the idea that someone would think you would think they look awesome.  G.I. Joe is kinda like that, and Channing Tatum is about as appealing a lead as Vincent Chase … which ain’t sayin’ much.

(2)  Julie & Julia ($20.1 million, $8539 per screen):  This opening feels maybe just a wee bit weak to me; I was kinda thinking it might get closer to $30 million.  Still, when you consider how many of the tickets were probably sold at the discounted senior-citizen price, this is a fairly solid, if unspectacular, opening.  I’d expect the legs to be considerable; don’t be surprised when the movie ends up making $100 million.

(3)  G-Force ($9.8 million, $2816 per screen, $86.1 million total):  Speaking of movie that are going to make $100 million, please pardon me for a moment while I vomit bits of fried chicken into my upper throat region.  Mmm, they’re bitter.

(4)  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($8.8 million, $2570 per screen, $273.8 million total):  Looks like those IMAX screens helped a little, but only a little.  This movie has nothing much to be ashamed of, but considering that ginormous opening day was pretty darn ginormous, well, it’s all felt like a big letdown since then.  In reality, though, it’s performed the same way all of the Potter films have done since the first one.  The next one comes out in the fall, and I’ll be interested to see if the return to the days of falling leaves and visible breath prompt an uptick in the receipts.

(5)  Funny People ($7.8 million, $2615 per screen, $40.4 million total):  Judd Apatow officially takes one on the chin.  The opening weekend was a slight disappointment; the second weekend is a near-disaster, plummeting 65% and wiping away any chance that this one could turn into a word-of-mouth hit (like Apatow’s previous films, The 40-Year-Old and Knocked Up).  This may also wipe away any chance Adam Sandler may have had at becoming a bankable star in serious roles.  Since previous efforts like Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, and Reign Over Me all fizzled, he managed to make it to a fourth strike; surely he’s out by this point.  Kind of a shame, since this undoubtedly means we’re due for another decade of incredibly, abysmally unfunny fart gags, dick jokes, and Rob Schneider cameos.  Kill me now.

It’s also another blow to the budding stardom of Seth Rogen, who has been in several commercial misfires in a row (including Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Observe and Report).  Sony must be feeling pretty nervous about that Green Hornet movie he’s making for the director of flop Be Kind, Rewind (Michel Gondry).  If Rogen now can’t manage to hit in an Apatow flick, it may mean America has dumped him.

And frankly, the more I think about it, the less I like Funny People, which has occasional flashes of inspiration but is largely a movie with no sense of direction.

(6)  The Ugly Truth ($7 million, $2353 per screen, $69 million total):  Man, this thing has made $70 million?  Seriously?

(7)  A Perfect Getaway ($5.6 million, $2670 per screen):  For a movie with not a great deal of promotion starring Milla Jovovich and zero zombies, this could have actually gone a lot worse.  Universal clearly dumped the movie into the marketplace, and can’t have been expecting much more than what they got.

(8)  Aliens in the Attic ($4 million, $1287 per screen, $16.2 million total):  Man, for a second weekend, that is a terrible per-screen average.  How on earth did Fox manage to get this thing onto over 3000 screens?

(9)  Orphan ($3.7 million, $1643 per screen, $34.8 million total):  Oughta be on DVD any second now.

(10)  (500) Days of Summer ($3.7 million, $4559 per screen, $12.3 million total):  Playing on about 800 screens, that per-screen average suggests that Fox would have been better advised to turn those 3000 screens showing Aliens in the Attic to this little arthouse darling.  Considering how many movies come out next week, it won’t be easy to get into many more theatres than it’s already in, and that might well keep it from blossoming into a true hit.

Speaking of next week, man, I dunno if I’m just out of practice from taking a week off or what, but I have no frickin’ clue what anything is going to make.

The winner of the weekend will probably be either G.I. Joe or District 9, which certainly has the ‘net a-buzzin’ … but that doesn’t always translate to bucks.  I think it’s going to end up in second place with a bit more than $20 million.

The Time Traveler’s Wife would smell like a hit in February, but in August, it seems like a castoff.  I think women might be busy seeing Julie & Julia and not caring about Eric Bana.  Also, Rachel McAdams might once have seemed sure to be The Next Big Thing, but she’s been off the radar for too long for me to think she’s got any real pull.  I think this movie will be lucky to do $15 million; then again, it’s based on a best-seller, which sometimes helps.

The Goods might benefit from a desire in fans of The Hangover to see another raunchy comedy, but I honestly have no sense of how well this movie has been promoted.  BoxOfficeMojo.com lists it as opening on only 1500 screens, which does not seem like a vote of confidence.  I’m gonna say $12 million.

Bandslam … what the fuck is a Bandslam, and does anyone care?

That leaves Ponyo, which gets an overly optimistic 800-screen release and will be lucky to crack $2 million unless I’m badly mistaken.  And in this instance, I hope I’m VERY badly mistaken.

Julie & Julia has no action scenes, but if it had, I suspect they would have been pretty entertaining to watch.  (I don’t know that Nora Ephron could shoot an action scene, but I’ll betcha that Meryl Streep and Amy Adams would be up to the challenge.)  It’s not a perfect movie, but the virtues are so virtuous that they pretty well render the problems insignificant.

And the chief virtues are Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.  Streep, of course, has at some point developed into … well, I don’t want to oversell my opinion of her, but I think it’s safe to say she’s one of the great movie stars of my lifetime, if not of all cinematic history.  Because I simply couldn’t force myself to, I didn’t see her in Mamma Mia! (a phenomenon at the worldwide box office last summer), but I did see her in last winter’s superb Doubt, and I was riveted by every second she was on screen.  The same was true of the otherwise-mediocre The Devil Wears Prada.

It’s true here, too.  It’s hardly news to report that a two-time Oscar winner is a great actress, but somehow, it had escaped me until just recently.  I mean, I knew she’s a great actress, but I didn’t know it; not, at least, until at some point during Doubt when I realized that I’d literally forgotten I was watching a movie.  (People use the word “literally” in an increasingly non-literal way these days, but here, I mean exactly what I say.)

In Julie & Julia, Streep plays Julia Child, the chef and television host who was unquestionably one of the most successful people to ever work in her field.  Child was a big personality, one whose mannerisms make it very easy to poke fun at her.  (The movie includes one famous such instance, in which Dan Aykroyd portrays her on Saturday Night Live.)  In the wrong hands, a movie about Child could have gone disastrously wrong, and resulted in something that verged on camp.  Streep, under the direction of Ephron, instead flawlessly makes Child’s mannerisms work to bring the audience closer to the character, instead of distancing the audience from her.  If you’re invested in a character, you might laugh with her, or because of her, but you’ll never laugh at her, and Streep’s ability to pull that trick off without a hitch is one of the more impressive acting feats I’ve seen in recent memory.

Part of the reason Streep is able to be so successful in the role is that Ephron’s screenplay is generally pretty good.  She’s occasionally prone to writing situations that would never, EVER play out the way she writes them, and sometimes her dialogue reflects that unreality.  But hey, guess what…?  It’s a movie! They don’t always have to be realistic, and if you don’t sometimes enjoy watching a fairy tale — which this unmistakably is — then I don’t have much to say to you.  Ephron pulled off a very similar trick in Sleepless In Seattle, a totally unbelievable movie that opted instead to do what Hollywood once excelled at: disregarding reality in favor of creating an artificial world which people actually enjoy disappearing into for a couple of hours.  Julie & Julia is a similar situation, and with its appealing scenes of Parisian locales and photogenic foods, I’d imagine that this is a movie a lot of people are going to fall totally in love with.

One thing Julie & Julia doesn’t have that Sleepless In Seattle did is Tom Hanks.  Moreso even than Big or (arguably) A League of Their Own, Sleepless In Seattle was the movie which made it evident that Tom Hanks was a superstar; make no mistake about it, part of the reason why the following summer’s Forrest Gump was such a box-office behemoth was that approximately 1.3 bajillion women had fallen hopelessly in love with him the previous year.

What Julie & Julia has as a replacement-of-sorts is Amy Adams.  I don’t know if her personal Forrest Gump is on the way or not, but she’s awesome in this movie, which makes it clear that she — like Hanks way back in 1993 — is simply a superstar waiting for precisely the right movie to explode onto the scene and tickle America’s fancy in just the right way.  That role may never come, but if it doesn’t, it won’t be because Adams is unequel to the task; it’ll be because Hollywood failed to make it happen for her.

I’ve seen a few reviews which suggested that this would be a stronger movie if it had restricted itself to telling the story of Julia Child, and if a weaker actress had played Julie, then those critics might have had a point.  Things being as they are, though, anyone saying this movie ought to have left out the Adams/Julie scenes … well, those people kinda missed the point, and by a mile.

It is true that most of the movie’s problems, such as they are, come from the Julie half of the story.  One of these problems is a bit spoilery, so don’t read the next paragraph if you want to avoid it.

Julie talks throughout the movie about wanting to meet Julia, and the expectation is that that’s how the movie will end: with Streep in some sort of (probably bad) old-age makeup meeting Adams and passing the torch to her.  There are even a specific couple of incidences which seem to point toward the movie taking that direction.  Now, on the one hand, I’m glad the movie didn’t go there, because I’d hate to have seen Streep in a bad makeup job, and also because I’m glad it didn’t feel the need to resort to such a blatant stunt … but on the other hand, you’ve GOT to avoid setting up those type of expectations if you’re not planning on satisfying them.  It’d be better if nobody even got the idea in their heads.

Another problem is that there are a couple of scenes of marital discord between Julie and her husband that seem almost totally forced.  Part of this is because the movie prior to these scenes has been quite successful at depicting a very nice, supportive marriage between the two (Chris Messina does solid work in that capacity, excelling at the art of enthusiastic eating).  I think the idea is supposed to be that Julie is a bit of a bitch — scratch “think,” I know it; there’s a whole scene designed to tell me that very fact in no uncertain terms — but that idea remains an idea, and never takes flight at all.  So she complains about having to live in a crummy apartment in Queens … is that supposed to make me dislike her?  Well, fail for you on that count.  I guess this could reasonably be seen as a flaw in Adams’ performance, but she’s just so damn attractive that I’m not sure I could bring myself to criticize her even if I felt she deserved it.  And I don’t feel she deserves it here; I’m going to choose to attribute the problems to temporary lapses in Ephron’s focus.  Which, let’s face it, seems plausible; she made Bewitched The Movie, after all.

These are very small problems, though; they’re mostly academic, and only academicians are going to actually be bothered by them.  (Other such problems: a brief foray into McCarthy-era politics amuses a bit and enlightens a bit but mostly seems out of place, and an astonishingly false scene in which Julie’s supposed friends are shown to be much more successful than she is feels like a bad episode of Sex and the City has somehow been cut into the middle of a reel.)

Mostly, though, the Julie storyline is quite compelling in its own right.  Julie is a civil servant in charge of answering a complaint line for people unhappy about plans to rebuild the World Trade Center (this part of the movie takes place in 2002, when New York and America had barely even begun to scab over the wounds of 9/11).  This, of course, is a miserable, soul-crushing job that involves either (a) taking abuse over the phone or (b) hearing sad stories from people who lost loved ones or (c) both.  Combined with the stress of not having achieved much relative to her friends, and compounded by what she perceives to be poor living arrangements, Julie is obviously on the verge of despair.  She pulls herself out of this despair by cooking, and seizes upon an idea: she’ll cook her way, in one year, through Julia Child’s famous book of French cuisine, and as if that weren’t enough, she’ll blog about it, too.

There is something more than a little profound in this structure Ephron builds the movie around.  A modern woman, beset by modern problems and stresses, looks for inspiration and solace back to the past, to a woman of great capability and standing, who herself — and this is not by any means irrelevant — looks for inspiration and solace even further into the past, surrounded as she was by European antiquity.  Child approaches life … well, a bit like a child: with relentless optimism and energy.  This occasionally takes adult turns into sadness and pain, but even in those instances, Julia is really quite a role model; decades later, she inspires Julie to integrate more of those qualities into her own life, and while there are bumps in that process, it is mostly successful.  (Adams’ on-screen sunniness goes a long way toward making this idea feel totally plausible, and even maybe a little bit moving.)

Nora Ehpron never — with the possible exception of the McCarthy scenes — allows the movie to dip into pretentiousness with these themes; instead, she uses them as a backbone for the film, and gets great mileage out of them not only as character traits, but also as a device for shuffling back and forth between the two storylies.  We see frequent instances of something Julia does reverberating into Julie’s life.  Sometimes, it even works in reverse: we’ll see Julie struggling with something, then cut to Julia dealing with her own version of the same thing.  This is a terrific use of cinematic structure, and simultaneously makes the past seem relatable and mythological.  It’s not exactly revolutionary as far as writing techniques go, but if it’s an old idea, it’s one which is executed here with considerable skill.

This deft, artful moviemaking is anchored by truly excellent acting (I haven’t even mentioned Stanley Tucci, who is simply outstanding as Mr. Child) and is not hurt a whit by the lovely locations, the sumptuous meals, the sense of fun and (yes) adventure inherent in a character taking on a seemingly impossible challenge, and the generally pleasant tone.  This is Old Hollywood-style entertainment, and if there’s any justice, it’ll make a big Old Hollywood pile of money.

I can’t necessarily say the same is true of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

However, I can’t honestly say that there isn’t some overlap between the two movies, as odd as that might sound.  For example: the Joes go to Paris, too.  Granted, it’s to stop a terrorist organization from destryoing La Tour Eiffel, and not to study at Le Cordon Bleu … but still.

There’s been a solid amount of fanboy-circle whinging about how this movie betrays the origins of the cartoon and (sigh) the toyline by having the Joe squad be an international organization, and not an American one.  I suppose that’s a valid complaint, but what it’s replaced with is one of the few elements of the movie I genuinely liked: the multinational, multiracial, multicultural makeup of the team is just plain cool.  It’s a simple idea, sure; but darn it, it’s a fun one.  This i’s a movie that makes it plain that going around the world … well, it’s fun to travel, dude!  That’s a sentiment shared by Julie & Julia, so there’s one similarity.

More to the point, both movies exist to do basically one thing: entertain.  Julie & Julia does that with nuanced performances, and with compelling instances in which two women go about improing their lives in the best way they know how; G.I. Joe does that by throwing action scene after action scene at you, and by stuffing the screen full of cool technology and gadgets and fight scenes and explosions and whooshbangbam.

The problem is that Julie & Julia succeeds at its goals, whereas G.I. Joe does not.

And yet, though I would definitely call it a bad movie, I can’t summon up any real dislike for The Rise of Cobra.  It never one time felt like director Stephen Sommers was trying to do anything more than entertain me.  He clearly set out to make a cartoon movie, and I guess in that regard, he was mildly successful.  Cartoons, after all, are pretty damn dopey; especially cartoons like G.I. Joe, which essentially existed only to service a line of toys.  Be honest: how good was any movie based on this property ever likely to be?

The best thing I can say about the movie is that I was never bored during it; the second-best thing I can say about it is that it never sucked so bad that it angered me (as did Transformers 2 earlier this summer).  There are some aspects that are fairly heinous, however.  One: Channing Tatum is a piece of driftwood as a lead actor.  I dunno, maybe there’s a decent actor in that big meaty case somewhere, but if so, he stayed in his trailer while the rest of him filmed this movie.  Zero charisma, and a complete waste as a lead character.  I wasn’t overly fond of Marlon Wayans, either, but he at least had some personality and occasional flashes of charm; Tatum is a pure stiff.

Another demerit: the CGI is occasionally quite bad.  Like, video-game cut-scene bad.  Like, PS2 video-game cut scene bad.  In other scenes, though, it’s perfectly adequate, which makes the bad scenes all the more jarring.

You can’t entirely hate a movie which has the gall to cast Jonathan Pryce as the President of the United States, though, and I was oddly charmed by the high body-count; folk die left and right in this thing.

I was also charmed, in no way that can be described as “odd” (“perverted” and “sweaty-palmed” and “bug-eyed,” perhaps), by Rachel Nichols as Scarlett.  Big Poppa Honk would love to spend himself some time with her.  Oh, yes, he surely would.  All pitched-tentness aside, though, I’ve been a fan of Nichols ever since The Inside, and I’m happy to see her getting more big-profile roles.

All in all, it’s a singularly dumb movie — one particularly choice bit of dialogue goes something like “Damn, that ninja is fast!”, and during one scene in Paris, you can, charmingly, see a mime on one side of street during a car chase (nothing says Paris like a mime in one of those black-and-white-striped shirts) — but it’s a movie that is totally honest about its dumbness, and for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, I can respect that.

My final thought for this review is that both Julia & Julia and G.I. Joe speak to the current trend in American pop culture of looking back in time for inspiration.  This whole remake — oops, “reboot” — phase we’re going through…?  Don’t kid yourself, kid; that shit ain’t no mistake.  We’re a country that is very deeply (and, for most people, very unconsciously) in the process of trying to figure out who and what we are, and a big part of that seems to involve looking back in time to first figure out who we were.  You know, back when we were better.  Maybe this is an act of figuring out who it is we need to be to be better; that’s certainly true for Julie.

One way of approaching that is to do what Julie & Julia does: to be a bit mindful of the process, all the better to profit by it.  The other approach is the one most people seem to be taking: not to mine the past for whatever wisdom it might have to offer, but to bury one’s head in the sands of the past, in the hopes of rediscovering the means of being happy, which means not coping with the modern world but forgetting all the parts of it we don’t like.  This, I think, is why some people are falling all over themsleves over the Transformers movies: they are pure flash, and they successfully bury certain segments of the populace in a semblance of happier times by throwing an ’80s-colored pair of spectacles over their eyes.  Watching those movies, or G.I. Joe, allows one to have the illusion of being in modern times without the complications of modern times.

Personally, I prefer the approach taken by Julie & Julia, but I’m no fool; I realize that it’s essentially the same thing.  I’d also like to point out that Hollywood had to do something similar to what Transformers and G.I. Joe are doing now back when I was a kid, and we got movies like Star Wars, Superman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark out of that deal.  So while I might understand the need for movies like Transformers in these troubled times, you’ll forgive me if I find the movies of that sort that we’ve been given to be pure garbage in comparison to the escapism of troubled times past.  (G.I. Joe is barely even qualified to be this generation’s The Last Starfighter, and I’d say Transformers is roughly on par with Megaforce.)

Either way, I suspect a lot of people will have a good time at the movies this weekend, and maybe, for now, that’s good enough.

G.I. JOE trailer in HD

Hitting theatres on August 7, this movie looks dumb as a post, but am I crazy or does it also actually look kinda fun?  Yeah, you’re right; I’m probably crazy.  Still, I’m going to bet that the movie pulls in some big-time late-summer bucks, and since it co-stars Doctor Who, Mr. Eko, and Darth Maul, not to mention the super-fine Rachel Nichols, I think I’m officially interested.