Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) is the party loving, good for nothing son of James Reid, the millionaire owner of a major newspaper. When James dies all is left to Britt. With nothing important to do and a newfound friend in his father’s former mechanic and all around bad-ass, Kato (Jay Chou) Britt decides to take up crime-fighting. On the other side of the coin is gangland boss Benjamin Chudnofsky who is eager to reclaim his former fear inducing persona. All the while Britt is using his newfound power as head of his father’s newspaper to hype up his superhero alter ego The Green Hornet and attempt to woo his new secretary Leonore (Cameron Diaz)
If that synopsis seemed lacking you’ll have to forgive me…there wasn’t much to work with. That’s literally all the meat there was to this story, and I use the word story loosely as it only served as a non adherent glue to hold the scenes of Rogen and Chou together. For once the performances in an action movie weren’t the problem, all were done well enough, the real problem was in the writing. I know that the big joke in The Green Hornet history was that the Hornet himself did nothing while his underappreciated sidekick Kato did all the real superhero work but they overdid themselves on this one. Rogen’s Britt Reid comes off as Billy Madison with a superhero complex. He doesn’t have a single redeeming quality and does nothing to make you like, or even give a damn about his character. There is no turning point where his character realizes it’s better to save someone than drink himself stupid every night; he just does it because he thinks it’ll be cool. Jay Chou’s Kato is likeable enough and is the only character I really cared to watch but they managed to add too much in terms of special effects to his fight scenes to the point where they came off as overdone and almost unwatchable, this is a huge shame because from what little I could see it seems that Chou has some real talent…you just won’t catch a good look here. Probably the most disappointing was Christoph Waltz’s bad guy, Chudnofsky. To be fair Waltz does ok with the horrible material he was given, however I have to put some of the blame on him since he chose to take the role. After his performance in Inglorious Basterds I really expected something big, what we get is a feminine bad guy with an inferiority complex. I mean the guy changes his name to Bloodnofsky because he thinks it sounds more mean...really, that’s the level of wit were dealing with here. I could go on and on about how there’s no story arc and the sheer ridiculousness of half of the action scenes but it would suffice to say I wasn’t impressed.
Like all bad movies there are some redeeming qualities. Black Beauty, the Hornet’s car, is badass and done perfectly even with it’s over the top missiles and flamethrowers I loved seeing this car on screen every second (well almost, the last few minutes it’s onscreen are utterly stupid). As much as I hate on the writing of this flick I will admit that there are a few chuckle inducing moments and I did have a smile on my face for some of the sillier parts of the movie. I also enjoyed seeing Edward James Olmos on screen again.
Do I need to sum this up? If so, here it goes, don’t see this movie. It was beyond bad, seriously the least fun I’ve had in a movie since Jonah Hex. There are far better superhero movies on the horizon if that’s your bag. I will say that some of my fellow critics didn’t hate it as much and at least one that I know of really liked it, but not me. If you feel you must at least wait for the DVD.
2 out of 5 Guttenbergs
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