The Green Hornet (2011)

Stars: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz
Director: Michael Gondry
Genre: Action, Comedy, Crime
Rating: D

If I were to say just one thing about The Green Hornet it would be “don’t see this movie.”  That’s it, nothing more, review done.  Okay? No?

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, a spoiled rich manchild (which I guess is a step up from his usual working class, stoned manchild) who inherits a newspaper after his father’s death.  Reid also inherits Kato (Chou), a mechanic and martial artist.  The two have a bromantic bonding moment during which they determine that they both hated Reid’s father, decapitate a memorial statue for his father, and then decide to become crime fighting superheroes.  As superheroes they go up against Russian mobster Benjamin Chudnofksy (Waltz), because it’s always smart to go up against the Russian mob.  Oh, and Reid also decides to restore his father’s newspaper to its former glory and use it as a way to get the attention of the mob, so he hires Lenore Case (Diaz) to do something with it.  I’m not exactly sure what her role was, I just know that she ends up playing the love interest (surprise, surprise), to both Rogen and Chou as they begin to fight each other for her and over their respective roles in the crime fighting business.

If this sounds like an attempt to be like Batman or Iron Man, but appealing to a stoner crowd, then you would be right. Seth Rogen is very, very believable as a man child, be he spoiled rich or poor and stoned.  He is not exactly believable as a superhero, no matter how far on the vigilante side he might be.  I spent a lot of the movie wondering just why Chou put up with him, even when he wasn’t exactly putting up with him.  Likewise, I wondered why Diaz hadn’t sued him for sexual harassment.  In the end, though, I think it really says a lot about a movie when you’re rooting for the Russian mobsters to defeat the all-American (?) superhero. The big problem with Green Hornet, asides from the fact that it’s just plain bad, is that it’s trying to fit into a market that’s a bit saturated.  Superheroes are the big thing right now, but if you think about it they’re all really similar.  Both Batman and Iron Man are rich, very successful men who utilize their money to fight crime and have reputations as playboys.  Bruce Wayne’s entire cover is the fact that he appears to be little more than a playboy in public, masking the fact that he’s really a super smart, super talented vigilante.  The reason why it works is because he’s super smart and super talented.  Likewise, Tony Stark is a huge playboy (no mask there), but also super smart and super talented.  He’s also very witty and really doesn’t attempt to be any beyond the law, secret vigilante because he comes public with his secret identity fairly early on.  Britt Reid… is just a manchild with a lot of money.  He’s not super smart, he’s not super talented.  That falls on Chou.  Neither character is really strong enough to hold the movie on their own, nor do they really do so together.  It falls short of expectations of a superhero movie, which is why, in short I’m going to repeat my earlier statement: don’t see this movie.  Go watch Batman, Iron Man, or Pineapple Express.  Really, I think it says a lot when Seth Rogen works better as a vigilante hero in a stoner comedy than in an actual superhero movie.