Laughs in 'G-Force' are missing in action

You know things are bad when a movie about crime-fighting guinea pigs doesn't live up to expectations.

After all, how high could those expectations be?

Still, "G-Force" overcomes these great odds, managing to be even worse than you'd guess.

Basically, the guinea pigs here just aren't that funny. There's a funny hamster, some funny mice, but the guinea pigs? Not so much.

Beyond that, the story is incredibly pedestrian, the "Transformer"-style special effects are mostly saved for the end (and even then they're nothing special) and the 3-D effects are downright cheesy.

If there's one thing noteworthy about this film, it's the immense waste of talent it presents. Among the live-action players are Zach Galifianakis ("The Hangover"), Kelli Garner ("Lars and the Real Girl"), Bill Nighy ("Love Actually") and Will Arnett ("Blades of Glory").

The guinea pigs are voiced by Sam Rockwell, Oscar-winner Penélope Cruz, Tracy Jordan and Jon Favreau. Nicolas Cage plays a talking mole. Because every good guinea pig movie needs a mole.

Let's see, the story. There's a secret government project teaching small critters to do spy work, but it might lose its funding, so the G-Force guinea pigs break into the mansion of a wealthy industrialist and steal his apparent plans for world domination.

Government agents, being idiots as all government agents in movies are, raid the G-Force lab anyway, scattering them about and most of the film has to do with them getting back together so they can save the world. The end.

It's possible small children will fall for this, but even dinky kids know when something's funny and when it's not, and "G-Force" just isn't that funny, or exciting, or interesting.

Really, how do you make a talking guinea pig not funny? Rest assured, Hollywood can do it.

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