THE GREEN HORNET is one of those atrociously bad movies that feels like it was assembled by committee in a board room while a comic rants and riffs about a couple of cool scenes. “Do we have merchandising?” “Will this appeal to the comic book geeks?” “Can we hire Cameron Diaz?” “Can we hire an Asian pop star to secure worldwide box office?”
Blame it on Seth Rogen who co-wrote this trainwreck of a movie that ends up being a stoner comedy spin on every Super Hero movie cliche. 2010’s KICK ASS did a much better job of zeroing in on these cliches, while THE GREEN HORNET doesn’t know whether to snicker or to let out a fart joke. Or blame it on director Michael Gondry who’s better known for whimsical comedies like BE KIND REWIND and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.
Rogen stars as Britt Reid, the playboy rich son of a newspaper magnate. Reid prefers to party, but when his father suddenly drops dead, he has to take over the family business. He soon befriends his father’s chauffeur, Kato (Jay Chou) who tinkers with cars like James Bond’s Q, and has the martial arts skill of a Bruce Lee. Lee, in fact, played Kato during the 1960’s TV series version of THE GREEN HORNET.
The evil villain is played by Christopher Waltz (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) who won’t be getting any Oscar nominations for portraying a crime boss who is worried about his image all the time. The less said about Cameron Diaz, the better.
Chou may be a pop star in Asia, but he has no charisma on screen. This leads to an uncomfortable lack of chemistry between Reid and Kato. While Reid acts as the boorish partyboy, Chou glowers from the side. I haven’t seen this kind of bad screen chemistry since, oh, Jet Li and Aaliyah in ROMEO MUST DIE.
There’s some mild entertainment about the gadgetry in the movie, but it’s all about Rogen trying to steer the movie between parody and noble hero origin story.
The rest of the movie is like having a drunk Robin Williams crash your dinner party. The drunk won’t shut up, won’t let anyone else talk, and ruins the evening. Just watch the gag reel and you’ll see the cast standing around smiling, encouraging Rogen to keep on improvising. Oh well, luckily there’s a big pile of comic books for the studios to dig through to find their next franchise.
THE GREEN HORNET official website: http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/thegreenhornet/