Unless you're allergic to celluloid, you've probably noticed favorites of the 1980s have been making a comeback in the 2000s. Hollywood would have you believe it's merely introducing the Ninja Turtles or Transformers to a new generation, but we know better. Now the time has come for  G. I. Joe to step up to the plate. Childhood icons of yesteryear like these are being turned into the cash cows of today, made with as little care and soul as the average blockbuster. With G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, it's hard to tell who the film's target audience is. Fans of the cartoon will see little resemblance to their nostalgic favorite here, while the uninitiated may be hard-pressed to find any thrills they haven't seen before -- and done more creatively.

As the title suggests, this testosterone fest chronicles the early days of G.I. Joe, an elite team of "real American heroes," and their fight against fledgling terrorist group Cobra. The story follows Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans), dedicated soldiers assigned to protect a case of warheads containing nasty little nanobots. The men are ambushed by a sultry villainess, the Baroness (Sienna Miller), but the weapons remain in safe hands, inspiring our boys to enlist in the Joes to  prepare for the next fight. Together, Duke and Ripcord train among the best of the best, including silent but deadly ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and artillery maestro Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). But Cobra, backed by scheming arms dealer McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) isn't down for the count yet and launches a full-scale assault on the Joes, intent on showing the world it means business.

Much hubub has been made regarding the recent Transformers sequel and the thrashing most critics delivered upon it. Some thought G.I. Joe would undergo a similarly spectacular savaging, and while it's better than Optimus Prime's latest outing, it's not in the clear  yet. For one, Joe is half an hour shorter, which makes it a lot less overwhelming. That being said, the action sequences here are extremely repetitive and go on much longer than they should. Also, there's not much variety either; most scenes consist of countless extras blown to smithereens while the photogenic leads suffer nary a scratch. The story's mild sci-fi bent allows for a little more invention with the weaponry (from pulse cannons to the much-touted "accelerator" suits), but it still amounts to Group A and Group B blasting away at each other until one gives up. That any emotional investment in the characters has been supplanted by the filmmakers' hope you buy their toys serves only to make matters worse. 

I can see mainstream audiences having a ball with G.I. Joe and its lighthearted thrills, but those who grew up on the show will likely be disappointed. Although I had more than my fair share of Joe playthings as a wee one, I even had trouble distinguishing who was who among the character roster. Snake Eyes leaves the deepest impression (mainly because he's the easiest to handle), but aside from a select few, who the good guys and the baddies are is anyone's guess. Plus, the story has been so homogenized, those moments that pay most tribute to the fans rank as the movie's more ridiculous. It's sort of like this past May's Wolverine movie, where plot eventually took a back seat to ensuring [insert beloved character here] got some screen time. As a result, the cast never really gets anything to do beyond shooting each other. Miller and Rachel Nichols make a foxy pair of opponents, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is all sneers as the man who would be Cobra Commander, but at the end of the day, everyone's job involves holding a gun and looking good doing it.

Summer has become open season for brainless action flicks, and by golly, does G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra rise to the challenge. It boasts a certain innocence and lacks some of the hang-ups that made Transformers 2 such a lurching wreck, but no one's going to accuse the picture of being overly ambitious. G.I. Joe comes across as candy for the eyes, and your tolerance for such cinematic saccharine will determine how big a kick you'll get out of it.

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

(Released by Paramount Pictures and rated "PG-13" by MPAA.)