On the couch

If Michael Bay adapting a children’s toy into a multi-gajillion dollar franchise, and Gore Verbinski turning a rollercoaster into the biggest thing to happen to piracy since Blackbeard decided “Arrrrr” might be a catchy sort of thing to shout, then it should come as no surprise that GI Joe has had magic Hollywood pixie dust (see also: a huge quantity of cash) sprinkled on it.

The iconic, and heavily accessorised, Hasbro toy soldier has been knocking around in plastic, comic and cartoon-form for years but has taken till now to make that most important (marketing) step onto film.
So with GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra the man who brought The Mummy back to life on screen, Stephen Sommers, was tasked with making the world’s favouite plastic action hero a celluloid cash cow.
The only problem is that Joe lacks that certain je ne sais quoi that Transformers, Pirates or even The Mummy had. Think about it – giant fighting robots are unusual and spectacular; Johnny Depp as Captain Jack was a comic character masterpiece and even The Mummy had a certain goofy charm in the form of Brendan Fraiser.
Joe, on the other hand, is a soldier. A very good one by all accounts, played by talented young fella, Channing “I survived Step Up with my dignity more-or-less in tact” Tatum. But still, just a soldier.
And, given the state of global politics, a gung-ho American soldier isn’t exactly the most sympathetic of characters. So the first thing Somers does is make Joe part of a secret international peace-keeping force and then pit him against an evil arms dealer bent on holding the world to ransom with his nasty new nano-weapon.
What follows falls somewhere between Team America (without the sense of humour) and the toy pages of the Argos catalogue – right down to the laborious training montages, product placement of stuff sure to be available at Christmas and a wooden attempt at emotional turmoil between Tatum and Sienna Miller’s evil Baroness.
GI Joe’s only saving grace are the action scenes set in Paris and even then it’s just because it’s nice to see somewhere you recognise being blown up as opposed to Genericburgh, Europe.
One can only hope that the hinted at sequel never sees the light of day.
From one American export to England, to a British export to, well, everywhere. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince marks the sixth on-scren adventure of the bespectacled boy-wizard, and it might not be the best of his adventures in a single-serving sense – that title falls to The Prisoner of Azkaban – it is far from the worst.
After another summer holiday of doing nothing worth filming – Voldmort is awfully polite about not bothering Harry when there isn’t a film crew present – we rejoin Mr Potter just in time for his arch evilness to begin a new term of Britian-bothering and general evilness.
This time, though, his presence is felt through his underlings most significantly snotty, blond posh kid, Draco Malfoy.
New to Hogwarts is avuncular potions teacher Professor Slughorn, played with magnificently comedic creepiness by Jim Broadbent. As with all guest teachers in the Potter series, Slughorn has a dark past/ulterior motive/weird head growing out of his back.
Other than introducing plot threads that won’t fully explored till the series comes to an end in 2010 and 2011, the only other incidents of significance are the burgeoning romances between some of the principals which is done in a slightly twee manner.
As always, however, there are some fantastic set pieces – Harry and Dumbledore going in search of a horcrux, for example – and the grown-ups that get screen time, the cream of British acting, are all hugely watchable.
Half-Blood Prince might come across a bit dull or place-holdery initially but, as a vehicle for setting up the final two films that will cover the Deathly Hallows for audiences unfamiliar with the books (all three of us) it’s really quite good. It might even be looked back on in years to come as one of the stronger in the series.
At least some of the bloody moppets tried to act in this one and, even if they still come across as more wooden than the Amazon basin before logging season, there’s at least some comfort to be found that the series has yet to screw up in any major way.