The Green Hornet Review

                                                          1 1/2 nuts

Director: Michel Gondry

For me there are two types of bad films.  One type acknowledges its absurd nature, and attempts to poke fun at itself.  This type of film can result in a rather enjoyable movie going experience.  The other type tries to be something it is not.  The Green Hornet is the latter of these two.  I wanted greatly to like this film because it stars Seth Rogan; a man whose movies are generally quite funny.  I also wanted to like it because I was seeing it in 3D and had paid more than I desired to for that “extra dimension.”  As I sat there, I tried desperately to find the redeeming value of this film and I simply could not.  The film is about Britt Reid, who is the sole heir to his father’s newspaper empire.  He is a rich, arrogant, spoiled individual, who up until his father’s death did nothing but party.  Now that his father is dead Britt must take over as the head of the newspaper company.  Britt is reunited with his father’s ex assistant Kato, played by Jay Chou, and the two decide to go out and fight crime. Britt and Kato decide to pose as bad guys so they can get to the really bad criminals.

Here in lies a big problem with the film; although I was watching it in 3D the characters were extremely two dimensional.  Kato, Britt’s side kick, is treated like garbage.  Kato’s has no depth; he simply is a super genius, armed with gadgets, and martial arts master.  There is a scene early on in the film where it seem like Kato is going to tell us something from his past and Britt cuts him short.  As the only real superhero in the film Kato is far too quiet and difficult to understand.

The female character in the film Lenore, played by Cameron Diaz, comes in as a temp secretary for Britt at the newspaper company.  Her character made no sense to me.  She is a college graduate with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Criminology, but somehow her career choices have landed her a temporary position as a secretary at the local newspaper.  Clearly she is overqualified for this job or just inexplicably unmotivated. 

The generic action scenes are long and repetitive.  There is nothing really new here in terms of a chase scene.  Rogan’s character is not a good guy and by the film’s end he hasn’t really changed. 

The humor in the film was bland, with only a few funny moments.  The film has a running joke regarding the pronunciation of certain characters’ names which just wasn’t funny. Regardless, the script kept pushing the same joke.  Christopher Waltz, who plays the villain, is not a very good bad guy; however, I do not fault his acting as his character is poorly scripted. 

In a peaNut Shell:  This film has a serious identity crisis.  I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a comedy or superhero film.  In the end it was sort of a combination of the bad parts of both.  As much as I have commented about the weak elements of this film I don’t think everyone will hate it.  It does have the occasional funny line and although the action is pretty average the gadgets in the car are cool.  There were good parts to this movie, however, I had seen them all before in better films.  The bad parts, I hope, I won’t have to see again anytime soon.