The first thing that came to mind after seeing The Green Hornet was another Seth Rogen film, Superbad. The title captures perfectly what this joke of a film is, and to enjoy it you'd probably need to have some Pineapple Express.
The tip-off should have been that Sony decided to release this film in the barren wasteland of January, dumping ground for failed projects. Why they decided to give Rogen and his writing pal Evan Goldberg $120 million to make a movie about an unpopular and largely forgotten about comic-book character isn't as obvious.
The story follows the turnaround of Britt Reid (Rogen), 28-year old son of Los Angeles' wealthiest newspaper publisher. Reid begins as a full-time, all-out playboy (imagine, Seth Rogen playing a slacker) but is soon forced into adulthood when his father mysteriously dies of a bee sting.
Not wanting to follow in his dad's footsteps - the two never got along, surprisingly - Reid decides to take the next obvious step of teaming up with his father's mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou), to fight on the city's crime-infested streets, with their main target being Russian kingpin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz). But instead of being heroes, they'll pose as bad guys to better infiltrate the underworld. In other words, lackluster versions of Batman.
What follows is a concoction of car stunts, gun tricks, Matrix-moves and Rogen sounding like he's on an Adderall binge. There's also some romance provided by Cameron Diaz' unnecessary secretary; the requisite hurt feelings between Brit and Kato; and Chudnofsky rebranding himself as Bloodnofsky. And it's all in 3D!
There are numerous problems - the storyline is simplistic, the action scenes overly long and hard to follow, and as in most bad hero movies, the villain is poorly developed, with no purpose being other than being the guy Reid has to take out.
But the main problem with the movie is that it's too much like what you'd expect Rogen to think a superhero movie should be and not enough (or none) of what director Michel Gondry would have envisioned. At the very least, Gondry's visual style - as epitomized in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - should have brought his trademark aesthetic to the comic-book movie, much in the way Chris Nolan was able to do in Batman Begins.
Instead, the final product is so outside Gondry's comfort zone that rumors that Gondry constantly butted heads with Rogen, and the fact he didn't have final say, seem more truth than rumor.
Rogen (unlike Waltz, who thought this would be a good follow-up to Inglorious Basterds) won't be too affected by the stain on his resume. No doubt we'll see him playing a big-hearted, lazy, pot-smoking duderino in a was-funny-five-years-ago bromance soon.
Trying doesn't matter when you always fail is the line young Britt hears from his father early in The Green Hornet. Britt's real-life counterpart should take note.
- Cameron Dunbar is a sophomore studying journalism. Send him a buzz at cd211209@ohiou.edu.
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3 Culture
Cameron Dunbar
Review: 'The Green Hornet'
Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou and
Christoph Waltz
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Rated: PG-13 for sequences of violent action, language, sensuality and drug content
Playing at: Movies 10, Athena Grand
