The Green Hornet (2011)
Directed by Michel Gondry
Britt Reid, the heir to the largest newspaper fortune in Los Angeles, is a spoiled playboy who has been, thus far, happy to lead an aimless life. After his father dies, Britt meets Kato, a resourceful company employee. Realizing that they have the talent and resources to make something of their lives, Britt and Kato join forces as costumed crime-fighters to bring down the city's most-powerful criminal, Chudnofsky.
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So they turn up the heat: After a ridiculous room-trashing fistfight between the hero and his sidekick (about as ridiculous as the similar fight in “Iron Man 2’’), “The Green Hornet’’ devolves into an overlong, confusingly shot demolition derby.
While it won't be giving the likes of The Dark Knight or Iron Man a run for the title of Greatest Superhero Movie Ever, it's a decent enough buddy-actioner that is at least better than the previews would have you believe.
It also feels a lot like 2008's " Iron Man " in that it is funny, its main character oozes charm, and it's designed with the hopes of spawning sequels.
Because unlike other genre movies, which had an occasional sense of humor — the “Iron Man” pictures, some of the early “Batman” films — this adventure aims for flat-out, frat-boy farce.
And while the second film in the " Iron Man " franchise lost the plot rather alarmingly, the first film with Robert Downey Jr. as the Marvel superhero was a pretty refreshing not-quite send-up.
In her first movie, “The Mask,” she played opposite Jim Carrey’s green-faced hero; 15 years later, she’s playing opposite Seth Rogen’s green-themed one.
The introduction of Cameron Diaz as secretary and shared object of affection is unfortunately a sad regression in her career, showing little evolution from her eye candy debut in The Mask.
Originally a 1930 radio serial and a 1960s TV show, the real Green Hornet was the straightest of the straight men, an enigma in fedora and trenchcoat who made Dragnet’s Jack Webb (“Just the facts, ma’am”) seem a party animal in comparison.
Far better would have been for all concerned to make The Green Hornet a much darker and dramatic affair, much like Tim Burton did with Michael Keaton in their 1989 rebirth of Batman.
"The Green Hornet" is built in the mold of "Batman": a masked vigilante and his sidekick use their tricked-out car and bottomless bank account to attack the criminal underworld.
Because unlike other genre movies, which had an occasional sense of humor — the “Iron Man” pictures, some of the early “Batman” films — this adventure aims for flat-out, frat-boy farce.
The film begins with a “Batman”-approved flashback in which imperious and scolding Daily Sentinel publisher and editor-in-chief James Reid (a wasted Tom Wilkinson) pulls an action figure out of the hands of his son Britt and rips its head off.
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After all, "The Green Hornet" — about a masked vigilante who is a newspaper publisher by day — was a radio series in the 1930s, a film serial in the 1940s and, for one season beginning in 1966, a television series.
Edward James Olmos ("Stand and Deliver") is the paper's editor.
Rogen’s take (and it is his take, he co-wrote the screenplay with Superbad co-writer Evan Goldberg) on the Green Hornet character flips the well-worn superhero-sidekick dynamic on its side, Big Trouble in Little China-style.
Now they’ve been ineptly reconceived by Seth Rogen (“Knocked Up,” “40 Year-old Virgin”) and his longtime friend/partner Evan Goldberg (“Superbad,” “Pineapple Express”), so perhaps there’s little that decidedly unconventional, French director Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Be Kind Rewind”) can do, particularly since staging imaginative action sequences is far from his sphere of experience.
It comes as no surprise that the movie was written by Seth Rogen, the film’s star, and Evan Goldberg, who helped write “Superbad” and “Pineapple Express.”
The script, based on the old-time radio show, was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who wrote the very inspired "Superbad."
For one thing, Rogen has had enough success in films like "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" to believe that everything he says or does is automatically funny.
Columbia Pictures should have had an inkling that slimmed-down Seth Rogen was not the right person for writing (with Evan Goldberg, with whom he created the hilarious “Superbad” ) a suitably serious tale of the carefree, party-loving, ne’er-do-well son of a Los Angeles media magnate.
Disappointingly, there’s no evidence to support early expectations that a tent-pole budget would enable Gondry to unleash his skills and imagination on a superhero flick, to create a commercial hit with artistic integrity of the likes of Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990) or Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2009).
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I also enjoyed the sort-of homage to " A Clockwork Orange "'s notorious "William Tell Overture" fast-motion sex scene, although in this case the quasi-pornographic content is more auto-related (it's a brisk tour of a lavish multicar garage with which Reid impresses a female conquest).
The closest comparison I can make is to 1996's The Phantom, which eschewed serious character introspection for old fashioned ass-kickery.
To that point, it seems Boam’s tongue-in-cheek theme will be that this Phantom doesn’t particularly excel at the job, or even want it — a sort of forerunner to Seth Rogen’s take on “The Green Hornet” in which our hero stumbles into any success he enjoys and largely thanks to his cast of supporting characters.