In a negative review , Betsey Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times panned the " overwhelmingly complicated , globe @-@ hopping , enemies within , enemies without story line " and 3D but noted that " the humor , when it work , offer ' Retaliation ' some redemption . " She ended with : " It 's convoluted . Frankly no one should have to think that hard to keep up with the Joes . " Another negative review came from Variety Magazine 's Justin Chang , who ridiculed the movie 's large @-@ scale destruction of foreign cities , writing : " Audiences who thrilled to the sight of Paris under biochemical attack in Cobra will be pleased to watch London endure an even more horrific fate here , although the sequence is tossed off in quick , almost ho @-@ hum fashion , with no time to dwell on anything so exquisitely crass as the spectacle of the Eiffel Tower collapsing . " He summarized the movie as " a more straight @-@ faced brand of idiocy than its cheerfully dumb 2009 predecessor . "