If I had managed to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation on Easter Sunday I might have thought it proof of God. Because for all its flaws, everything that is so incredibly dumb about it, everything so strangely wrong, I somehow enjoyed myself. After hating, and I do mean hating, the original film, this one I went into ready for the worst. And despite actually wanting to dislike this film, I couldn’t. It left me dumbfounded, my brain confused. I didn’t know why I liked it. It was the ‘Immaculate Projection’.

Make no mistake. G.I. Joe: Retaliation is not a good movie. It’s just hard to not enjoy yourself.

Dwayne Johnson plays Roadblock, Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce is the president, Bruce Willis is General Joe Colton (the man G.I. Joe is named after it seems), someone plays Jinx, someone else plays Flint, yadda yadda. This is not meant as an insult to the actors and actresses who took on the other roles, but one thing that struck me is how we know nothing about anyone. There is zero backstory to the characters so calling them one dimensional is almost gracious. Roadblock, Jinx, Duke, Colton, Flint, and whomever else you care to mention are like interchangeable blocks with different name tags on them. They just show up to shoot guns. It doesn’t matter that Jinx uses blades. It could be Flint that uses blades. It just happens Flint uses guns. Whatever. Not like it made a bit of difference. The casting and subsequent plotting is like making a movie out of Lincoln Logs. Every piece is like every other piece and none is really important on its own.

Which one of us is American?

There is one small attempt at backstory showing Duke (Channing Tatum) playing with Roadblock’s kids but in possibly the movie’s smartest choice, Duke and all of Channing’s earnest lack of acting chops, are removed from the film in a big explosion. And so maybe it was supposed to be sad, but I was glad to see him go.

The movie does have a plot. After Cobra’s shapeshifting Zartan, played by Arnold Vosloo for about 12 seconds, infiltrates the White House at the end of the first film, he spends much of the second film disgracing the G.I. Joes while posing as the US President. There’s stuff about killing off all but a few G.I. Joes who have to lay low until they can figure out a plan. There’s stuff about freeing Cobra Commander so he can yell at Zartan for being incompetent, despite Zartan completely putting in place a world domination scheme while Cobra Commander sat in prison under lock and key. Talk about an ungrateful boss. And there’s stuff about Cobra Commander dropping tungsten rods from space to destroy the rest of the world. He blows up all of London to make his point and threatens the rest of the world leaders to pay him supreme allegiance to prevent total destruction. Of course G.I. Joe rides in to stop him, blah blah blah…boom…. explosion… zap…pow… Do you really care? I mean honestly. Do you really care about the plot? It’s G.I. Joe – it’s a movie about a snake themed organization whose only goal is world domination and the American good guys who try to stop them. Who cares about the “whats” or “whys”? This is about America rocking all over bad guys in cartoon fashion. Plot details are superfluous.

And maybe this is why I enjoyed the film. I didn’t care what was going on. It was very strange. I went with my own G.I. Joe (my friend Joe, who is having his gall bladder removed in a few days) At the end of the movie I said “wow – that was a loud film.” To which he responded “Yeah, it kept me from sleeping.”

And that explains a lot. This is a boring exciting movie. The lack of comma is on purpose. Boring is not modifying movie, it’s modifying exciting. Retaliation’s director Jon Chu has invented a new form of movie. Stuff blows up like crazy. Tanks bust through other tanks. Helicopters lay waste to squadrons of soldiers. There are kung-fu ninja fights watched over by the RZA. And in possibly the most ludicrously awesome part of the film, a high speed nina-chase on zip lines. It makes zero sense that two heroes who sneak up the backside of the mountain escape on their pre-installed zip lines on the front side of the mountain. It makes no sense that the person they kidnap goes down a single direct line to their destination while they take a circuitous route of multiple lines to the same place. It makes no sense that the villains give chase shooting off harpoon pistols loaded with an apparent magazine of harpoons that held 100 yards of rope each harpoon. Who cares? It was gloriously over the top. And yet emotionally meaningless so once the excitement was done I stopped caring instantly. Hence “boring exciting”.

At the end of the film I asked a family in the back row what they thought. They said “well, a lot of stuff exploded and people shot guns, and stuff happened. So I think it was okay. But I don’t really remember much.” Five minutes later the patriarch was at the urinal next to mine saying he thinks “the problem is, they don’t explain anything about anybody. So it’s like, yeah that exploded, but I don’t know why I care.”

G.I. Joe: Retaliation is a competently made piece of strange action that will leave your eyes ablaze but your heart wanting more. And in the fight between the two, your brain will be left confused and unable to form an opinion. So go see this? No. But don’t not go see it either.