Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz and Christoph Waltz
Directed By: Michel Gondry
Written By: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, based on the characters created by William Trendle and Fran Striker
Produced By: Neal H. Moritz
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 110 minutes
Website: greenhornetmovie.com
Budget: $90 million
Genre: Action, Comedy
Release Date: January 14, 2011
Absolutely no one was demanding a Green Hornet movie. There’s more than enough superheroes to go around Hollywood to feed the blockbuster beast – Thor, Captain America, and Green Lantern are all on their way to cinemas just this summer alone. The Green Hornet, however, has a bit of a different pedigree than his comic book counterparts. The Hornet is, by day, Britt Reid, millionaire newspaper publisher. By night, Reid is “The Green Hornet,” who, with his trusty sidekick, Kato, fights crime under the guise of committing it – no one suspects that the infamous criminal mastermind, Green Hornet, is in reality a superhero incognito. Originating in a series of 1936 radio dramas, the Green Hornet then expanded into film serials and comic books, as well as the briefly popular ‘60s television series (more famous for Bruce Lee’s role as Kato than anything). Since then, the duo has existed in the pop culture ephemera, nostalgia on the back-burner, waiting for the movie superhero revival to give it its seemingly inevitable turn on the big screen.
After a few false starts (including one under the pen of Clerks director Kevin Smith), the version that makes it to screen stars comedian Seth Rogen (Knocked Up), who co-wrote the script. Rogen perhaps takes a page from Smith’s cruder take on the character by portraying Britt as a partying slacker with more money than sense, oblivious to the disapproval of his publishing magnate father (Tom Wilkinson). Adrift after his father’s unexpected death, Britt continues his hedonism until he meets up with Kato (Jay Chou), his father’s former mechanic. Kato builds neat gadgets, knows kung-fu, and makes a mean cappuccino to boot. A prank gone wrong leads to Britt and Kato running afoul of some thugs, and like a kid with too much money at the toy store, Britt decides taking down bad guys is fine. With Kato’s (considerably better) skills at his disposal, he attempts to fight crime and evade suspicion from the bad guys by pretending to be one of them. This gets the attention of Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds), the local crime kingpin who doesn’t appreciate the competition.
Money and the gadgets be damned, Rogen’s Britt has more in common with Shaggy from “Scooby-Doo” than Bruce Wayne. Classic elements like the “Black Beauty” car are still there, and there’s even a brief nod to Bruce Lee in one scene, but this version of the Green Hornet has little in common with earlier iterations. There’s room for tongue-in-cheek superhero action in the midst of self-serious turns like The Dark Knight, and Rogen plays Britt Reid with the same sort of stoned earnestness he’s applied to his earlier roles – rather than, you know, acting.
This is not the strait-laced Green Hornet Van Williams played in the ‘60s. Selfish, crude, and generally not heroic, Britt Reid is played for laughs, and the screenplay reflects that with every line out of Rogen’s mouth. Chou, the best piece of casting in the movie, is good, exasperated fun as Kato, and there’s a marginal romantic subplot in which the two men both try to romance Britt’s new secretary (Cameron Diaz), but at no point is this not Rogen’s show.
Adding further quirk is director Michel Gondry, known for more overtly bizarre movies such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. A big-budget superhero film seems a little outside his comfort zone, but Gondry gives the action scenes a stylish energy and seems content to let Rogen and Chou riff about cars and argue over which one’s the sidekick. Action and comedy are hard, together even more so.
The movie veers between wanting to ground the idea of superheroes in reality (a foray into the slums of L.A. doesn’t go well for them) and demanding the audience buy into the outlandishness. (A movie where the villain tries to get everyone to call him “Bloodnofsky” clearly isn’t meant to be taken seriously. The Joker he ain’t.) It’s a silly movie, facing its audience with a wink and a shrug, and for the most part it manages both the action and the comedy with unembarrassed, unapologetic aplomb; it feels as though, at any given moment, a car chase could end with a fart joke and the movie could trundle on without missing a beat. There’s nothing epic, nothing definitive, nothing more than a diversion here. The Green Hornet as a character probably deserves a little more respect than he gets in his first big screen outing, but until he gets a new direction and certainly a new actor, he’ll have to settle for getting a few laughs and some decently staged violence.
2.5 Stars
