Green Hornet

The “going green” phenomena has now taken over our superheroes, with “The Green Hornet” however, the movie proves to be recycled material that fails to excite audiences.

Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) is a spoiled, his father (Tom Wilkinson) publisher of The Sentinel newspaper, dies suddenly and leaves him in charge. Britt then meets Kato (Jay Chou) and they realize they can change the city.

Posing as criminals to defeat the villains they fight crime as the Green Hornet and his sidekick using a car called the Black Beauty that shoots bullets, beanbags, rockets and fire. However with the help of Britt’s secretary, Lenore Case, they learn that the head of all the gangs in Los Angeles, Chudnofsky (Christopher Waltz), wants them dead.

“The Green Hornet” is a fairly standard superhero plot, except that it is missing a lot of the classic superhero action. The plot mostly focuses around the humor, which tries really hard to be funny, but fails. If the humor worked it might be more acceptable, but a movie that centers around characters, action and dialogue that tries to be funny but in reality isn’t eventually becomes miserable to view (as well as boring). The plot also takes an excruciatingly painful time to arrive at the climax.

A superhero movie should provide lots of action, and some humor thrown in when appropriate. However, “The Green Hornet” forgets this and tries to make it a comedy, unsuccessfully.

Quite simply there isn’t enough action and so the plot stays stagnant, especially since the comedy fails to move it. When there is action, half the time Kato and Britt are fighting the bad guys and the other half they’re fighting each other.

There are also times where the movie tries to be serious, then in the next scene it’s almost laughing at itself. The inconsistency of whether or not it’s trying to be serious or not makes it confusing for viewers.

The screenplay (Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg) isn’t that fantastic either, they keep using the same gags, once again thinking they’re writing a comedy. Also there is a lot of cursing, which usually isn’t that bothersome but after so much it starts to become obnoxious. The words seem more like filler words than actually having any meaning. It begins to sound like people who swear to make themselves look cooler, but end up causing themselves look ridiculous.

The acting in “The Green Hornet” is a little over the top as well. There just a lot of yelling and rambling being overall unconvincing. Chou does a gives a good performance as Kato staying in character as a cool, calm material arts master. However, Rogen’s character is contradictory, whether or not he’s going to play the smart, courageous hero or the dumb, cowardly hero or even the smart, nice Britt or the dumb, jerk Britt. Sometimes he’s a likable character, other times he’s not. His motives for becoming the Green Hornet are also inconsistent at times it appears he does to entertain himself, show-off or help people.

The special effects in “The Green Hornet” are not that “special”, nothing hugely spectacular or unique. Also watching “The Green Hornet” in 3-D is not that remarkable either, unless it’s remarkably similar to watching a movie in 2-D. The only cool 3-D part in “The Green Hornet” was the ending credits.

All in all “The Green Hornet” is a good movie to watch if you want to see a Seth Rogen comedy (that’s not even funny). However, if you want a super-cool superhero movie, then just stay home and watch whatever “Batman”, “Spider-man” or “Superman” you already have instead of wasting your green at “The Green Hornet”.