G.I. Joe and The Goods

Last weekend Angel and I went to the drive-in movie theatre. I love the drive-in theatre and I have decided that the Inland Empire has the perfect summer weather for an evening at the drive-in. You roll down the windows, recline your seat, turn the stereo up, and watch the movie while the light evening breeze serves as a free air conditioner. Plus, for $7 you see two movies. Grant it, sometimes the selection is less than ideal. The time before this I saw Public Enemies and The Hangover together. Interestingly I went for Public Enemies but ended up enjoying The Hangover more. There are four screens to choose from, one is always two kid/family movies, and the other three are kind of unpredictable. Generally I find two movies from different categories coupled together, Sci-Fi and comedy, Romance and thriller, etc. (ex. G.I. Joe and The Goods, The Ugly Truth and District 9), but that is not always true. Sometimes two movies from the same category are together, like two horror films. It's kind of unpredictable.
Anyways, so Angel and I really wanted to go but neither of us had a particular movie in mind that we really wanted to see. The Goods sounded funny and G.I. Joe (cough*Joseph Gordon Levitt*cough)had some appeal so we went for it.
I actually was impressed with G.I. Joe and thought The Goods fell short.
I thought that G.I. Joe did a great job of making me want to know what comes next. In the opening it becomes clear that a character from the bad side (Ana/Baroness) and a character from the good side (Duke) have a history, but rather than explaining then you are shown snippets of flashbacks throughout the movie. That is what first drew me into the story, I wanted to know what the story was between Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ana (Sienna Miller).
The special effects and CGI are great, I think the story offers more than Transformers in terms of plot. The movie was fun for me because I wasn't given everything, so the pieces sort of needed to be fit together to finish the puzzle. This is another movie that I had absolutely no background knowledge on and I think Angel and I enjoyed it a lot more because we didn't know what the story was about. An aspect of the ending was a huge surprise to us.

The Goods was kind of weak, it was funny at times but I enjoyed The Hangover a lot better. Maybe because I enjoyed G.I. Joe, the movie before The Goods, whereas I was disappointed in Public Enemies, the movie before The Hangover. The thing about these comedies, the crude comedies, is that there are unnecessary production decisions made that add nothing to story. The decision to have a scene in a strip club where exotic dancers direct attention away from the main characters as oppose to a bar where there are no or minimal distractions, seems pointless to me. It's like the writers recognize that the dialog is crap in the scene so they set it in an environment where the male attention is directed away from the characters so they don't realize how stupid the plot is. Since these movies have a male target audience, it doesn't matter. I, however, am kind of offended by it.

So, I spent $7 which is less than a matinee at most theatres to see two movies. I really liked one and won't be re-watching the other. All and all, pretty sweet deal and a Saturday night well spent.