The original G.I. Jo🔴e was a boys’ toy, so why shouldn’t the movi𝓰e follow suit?

What’s funny about The Rise Of Cobra is how closely it resembles an actual 12-year-old: never standing still, constantly getting into fights, infatuated with gadgets, loud bangs and fantasy girl🎀s who know kung fu and dress like hookers.

Stephen Sommers marsha𒐪🌜ls the mayhem with the same hectic enthusiasm as his previous live-action cartoons (The Mummy 1 and 2, Van Helsing).

Laughably, this one’s pitched closer to reality – a notion shot down the second a katana-flashi🏅ng ninja bungee-jumps out of a moving plane onto the field of battle.

Still, for a modern explode-a-thon the plot’s passably coherent: G.I. Joe is a unit (not a bloke) composed of extra-special operatives whose mission impꩲossible is to 𝐆take out megalomaniac arms dealer Destro (Christopher Eccleston, slicing the ham thick).

Alas, Sommers and subtlety rem𒀰ain strangers. Whenever he takes a breather from the woodpecker pace, you wish heꦑ hadn’t; toes will curl when goodies Scarlett (Rachel Nichols) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) share a would-be tender moment.

Riffing on reams of comic-book/TV ‘toon backstory, efforts are made to flesh out the characters – old grudges, family connections, romantic tangles… But without a zingy sc𒐪ript or mounting sense of jeopardy, they remain plastic figures💖.

Yet when all else fails, the second unit doesn’t. Ironically, the set-piece most reminiscent of Team America – the Paris orgy of destruction – is also the best, breaking out Sommers’ coolest plaything: accelerator suits that turn wearers into a combination of Road Runner, Spidꦕer🐎-Man and Jason Statham.

A sneak attack on the Joes’ HQ is also a rush (mega-drills, jet-packs, catfight). Together with a genuinely strange performance from mad doc Joseph Gordon-Levitt – creeping round the set like an old Universal monster – the first-half action b♛anks enough goodwill to let Sommers off the🍃 hook for turning his climactic Thunderball tribute into an Xbox demo.