Seth Rogen stars as Britt Reid, the son of newspaper mogul James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), he's a spoiled, rich, party boy and a perpetual failure in his father's eyes. After his dad dies from the result of a bee sting Britt inherits his fathers media empire, including his paper, The Daily Sentinel. He meet's his father's old valet/mechanic Kato (Jay Chou) when he realizes that he fired the guy who makes the good coffee and has him called back in, turns out Kato makes the coffee with a special machine he built. Suitably impressed by Kato's skills he keeps him around and they get a little merry together. Britt decides he want's to go out and play a prank, specifically cutting the head of his father's memorial statue. After the deed is done Britt notices a couple under attack from a gang and decides to interject, making himself a new target, Kato comes to the rescue and saves him with his impressive martial arts skills, including the ability to somehow slow down time when he gets an adrenaline rush...seriously what the fuck?
Flush from their success Britt declares they have both been wasting their potential and based on how good it felt to help those people they should fight crime, but they won't make the mistake that all those other comic book heroes do, they won't let people know they are the heroes they will play the villains instead. He decides to use The Sentinel to publicize his own exploits and dubs himself The Green Hornet, using the knowledge of his newest hire Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) to map out how a new criminal would take over the city they set out to take on crime. This doesn't sit well with current criminal kingpin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz) (I was tempted to mention how ludicrous his name is, but it only get's worse so that can wait until later). After our heroes get into a fight over how important they each are to the Green Hornet project they part ways. Britt soon realizes, with the help of Lenore, that his fathers old friend DA Scanlon (David Harbour) is corrupt and in league with the NOW ludicrously named Bloodnofsky (he grew tired of people being more afraid of Green Hornet that he decided he needed a new name, honest). Luckily our heroes patch things up in time to take them down and save the day.
So let's start with my problems with the flick. First there is no real motivation for Britt to even become Green Hornet. Traditionally he was spurred on by his father's murder, here he doesn't even know his father is murdered until 10 minutes from the end, which he comes to realize in a badly conceived scene that not only makes zero sense but appears to be there for nothing more than a cheap laugh. Said scene see's Rogen as Britt meeting with Scanlon who comes clean about not really ridding the city of crime, admits he was using his father to lie to the public and is ultimately responsible for his death. Britt then, supposedly, experiences one of Kato's slow-time moments brought on by the adrenaline of finding out his father was murdered, where he pieces together the puzzle while conversing with his dead father in his head, only to be told he has been sitting there with a blank look on his face for five minutes. Get it? hee-haw very funny, not. The scene makes absolutley no sense what so ever, yes it's a comic book movie but it's traditionally been one based more on gadgets, toys and skill a la Batman than super powers. An even bigger crime is the whole joke of it all falls flatter than a transvestites chest. Bringing me to problem number two, this flick just can't seem to decide if it want's to be serious or ridiculous, bouncing around from sincere serious moments to moments that are so ridiculous they almost make you cringe.
The plot itself is so completely contrived that both myself and my wife, who saw it with me, had a hard time even following anything that resembled logic. It's almost like the writers (Rogen and Evan Goldberg) knew the bones of a Green Hornet story, plotted out the major events, father dies, Britt becomes Green Hornet, Kato becomes his side kick etc then wrote a semi-comedy story around them not really caring if it all made much sense. For example, it's hard to believe that Reid would go from playboy, to vandal, to watching his new best friend kick a few guys asses, to vigilante taking down the criminal underworld with no motivation other than 'it felt good to watch you help those people and punch that one guy because I have zero fighting skills'. As far as who is more important to the Green Hornet project? I'm with Kato because Rogen as Green hornet does next to fucking nothing in this movie. Except gush, in typical Rogen fashion, over how awesome everything Kato can do is. Yeah Kato has always been the bodyguard of the story but at least previous incarnations of Green Hornet could take care of themselves.
Overall, for me as a movie fan, it's just a bad, bad movie. Full of plot holes, cliches and badly timed gags. As a little added insult to injury it's some of the most shoddy 3D I have ever seen, I was repeatedly trying to wipe my 3D glasses clean thinking there was some sort of blemish or something that was distorting the picture only to realize I could watch the movie without them and, excluding a slight blur here and there, not even tell the difference. May as well have flushed the $8 extra down the khazi. As I have stated before anything I say here is merely my opinion and there are people out there that will find this movie perfectly enjoyable, Chou is a particular bright spot as dead pan Kato to Rogen's buffoon. As someone who has enjoyed Seth Rogen's work in the past I can definitely see how his fans will enjoy his performance here, what stopped me from doing so was knowing what the Green Hornet should, or could have been, and watching him play the complete opposite. Unfortunately I couldn't in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone who has been a fan of the Green Hornet in his past incarnations, this just isn't the GH you are used to.
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Written by: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
Created by: George W. Trendle
Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz and Cameron Diaz
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Website: http://www.greenhornetmovie.com/
Out of curiosity, if you've read Kevin Smith's Green Hornet comics based on the script he wrote, do you think they would have made the better movie?
ReplyDeleteYes I do, absolutely. Purely from a story standpoint the Kevin Smith script hold's together far better. While it's the same basic premise, avenging the murder of his father, it's just done in a much better way.
ReplyDeletefantastic content!
ReplyDeleteThanks,
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