Quick rants: Super Bowl movie ads

A few quick thoughts on the films offered during the Super Bowl, from least to most encouraging:

Monsters Vs Aliens: A weird mishmosh of Independence Day, The Incredibles, Mars Attacks!, and Monsters, Inc. 3D notwithstanding, it just doesn't look that entertaining.

Angels and Demons: We were already underwhelmed by The DaVinci Code; will be more interested now that they gave Tom Hanks a haircut?

Fast and the Furious: A premise that could have been really interesting (I actually can appreciate the original in this franchise); the potential overuse of CGI might ruin it (he takes his classic Dodge under a flaming semi?).

The Year One: Michael Cera is usually entertaining playing himself; Jack Black can be good or really, really bad. The History of the World, Part I, went through this territory, as have the Monty Python Boys. There has to be something fresh to offer for this duo to pull it off.

Up: It pains me to put a Pixar film this low; the premise initially seemed pretty funny (curmudgeon literally takes off, leaving his neighbors behind, except for an unexpected stowaway). The preview they used hints at the hijinks that will be involved, but really doesn't show anything. I'm sure it will be good, but the ad men get few points for effort.

Land of the Lost: Not sure how much of this one will be homage vs. tongue-in-cheek comedy vs CGI action adventure; still, the original series was pretty fun (what I vaguely recall from ABC repeats), and Farrell is due some success. If this one doesn't do well, Farrell should dedicate himself to dramas.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen: The first was fun and funny. The action in this one looks good, and I'm hopeful Bay et al will keep the same notion. It helps that you can actually see the Transformers relatively clearly in the scenes in the trailer.

Race to Witch Mountain: This isn't a comment on the quality of the final film- who knows where that will land. The premise in decent, and Dwayne Johnson is pretty charismatic as an actor. The trailer rests on his shoulders, landing this high on my list.

Star Trek: Abrams has envisioned the early days of Kirk, Spock, and the gang pretty well. I hope he doesn't get swallowed up in his fun toys (where they, in part, went wrong in Star Trek:Nemesis). The new cast looks just right; let's just hope the action slows down or everyone will get motion-sick.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra: Call me an optimist. They could have royally screwed this up (they almost did; the original script had G.I. Joe as a sort of UN Task Force based in Brussels!). The actions looks good, the set-up looks good. Christopher Eccleston as Destro will be awesome (and I hope they give him his face mask at the end of the film); the rest of the cast is at the least presentable (Quaid as Hawk is actually spot-on). And a good idea not to show Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cobra Commander quite yet!
On the other hand, they shouldn't have shown this ad yet. The perfect teaser, for our generation: the screen is filled in black, the camera slowly pans back and we slowly see what looks like a visor then a face then Snake Eyes. He is the definition of G.I. Joe for our generation, and a teaser is what they need now, for a film coming out in August.