14 DAY TRIAL // Just the other day, Paramount Pictures announced that “G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra,” seen as the latest blockbuster of the summer, would open in US theaters this Friday without critics getting to see it beforehand. Naturally, this generated talk of lack of confidence in the film on behalf of the studio and it turns out this might have been the case, as early reviews of “Joe” are calling it a useless pile of nothing, the LA Times says in The Envelope section.
The idea with a film premiering in theaters without critics getting to see it first is that it’s a studio move blocking them from thrashing it before release. Such a strategy also hints that the studio knows the project it’s about to launch lacks quality, and is therefore trying to keep critics from pointing it out to audiences. This way, the studio recoups some of the money it invested in making the film in the first place. The same goes for “Joe,” reads a post on the aforementioned e-zine, with critics literally killing the film for its bad acting, bad writing, bad directing and basically bad anything.
Some critics, such as Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal, says The Envelope, did not even bother to see the film before reviewing it, as he says Paramount gave him permission to review it based on the trailer alone. For audiences too, the trailer should speak volumes: the film is pointless, loud and bad. Most critics agree with this too, as the post reads further on, many of them even saying “G.I. Joe” is actually worse than “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” Still, fans must not forget that “Transformers 2” pulled many millions at the box-office, and the $175 million “Joe” might do the same no matter what critics say.
“‘G.I. Joe’ opens today to lots of hype but little in the way of substantive reviews. Mainstream critics were kept from advance screenings of ‘G.I. Joe.’ Instead Paramount chose to show ‘G.I. Joe’ to reviewers more likely to find favor with this slam-bang shoot-em-up. Even so, the overall score of the 61 reviews for ‘G.I. Joe’ at Rotten Tomatoes sits at just 39 today. The average score of the five critics from the cream of the crop at Rotten Tomatoes who have managed to see the movie is just 20. And the reviews at Meta Critic average out to only 29 with the decent review from Variety skewing those results upward. Those numbers will shift as more top-tier critics weigh in on this $175-million movie. Most studio pictures are rated by at least three dozen reviewers on these aggregating sites.” The Envelope says.
Nevertheless, it’s the audiences that will have the final say on whether “Joe” was a bad idea or not, it is also said. The first sign of that should come this Monday, when box-office numbers over the weekend will be made public, so keep an eye on this space to see how “G.I. Joe” fared.