Mixing the stoner comedy of Seth Rogan (Knocked Up) with the quirky visual styling’s and imagination of director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) to create a big budget superhero caper should be an intriguing prospect. But The Green Hornet is sadly more a miss than hit affair.
Not exactly your best known superhero, The Green Hornet began its life as a radio serial, spinning off into comics and then a short lived 60’s TV series with Bruce Lee in the sidekick role. Screenwriters Rogen and longtime friend Evan Goldberg (they penned Superbad) have brought the property into the 21st century as notorious L.A party boy Britt Reid (Rogen) realizes the emptiness of his playboy ways after the death of his overbearing media magnate father (Batman Begins’ Tom Wilkinson). He joins forces with Kato (Taiwanese pop star and actor Jay Chou stepping into Lee’s shoes) his father’s former mechanic, to fight the scourge of crime in LA LA Land but with a twist. As the bumbling Green Hornet, he and Kato (his ass-kicking, techo wizard sidekick) pose as criminals to fight crime. This puts them on the radar of crime-kingpin-in-mid-life-crisis Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds). Meanwhile, as newly minted publisher of The Daily Sentinel, Britt hires the whip-smart and sexy Lenore (Cameron Diaz) as his secretary. She becomes the unwitting mastermind of the fledgling super duo’s trajectory.
Britt Reid/The Green Hornet (Seth Rogan) and Kato (Jay Chou)
Superhero aficionados Rogen and Goldberg have attempted to add relational drama into the mix and this proves to be one of the film’s deadliest missteps. While Rogen delivers his expected stoner shtick in likeable, if heavy handed fashion, Chou, despite his acrobatic prowess, is pretty wooden as Kato. There’s a serious deficit in chemistry between the two at times – not a great omen for a superhero movie. Meanwhile, Diaz grits her teeth and bares it with her thankless role and Waltz is given a pretty bland villain stereotype to work with. That said, Waltz did set the bad-guy bar sky high as the most chilling of Nazis in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009).
Amongst the film’s flat spots, there are some funny sequences, while the action scenes are suitably impressive – the duo’s pimped up getaway car is equipped with an arsenal of weapons and gadgets to make 007 drool. That said, Gondry’s direction isn’t anything any capable director couldn’t pull off. Adding 3D elements in post production gives the format, outside of action sequences, a perfunctory and gimmicky feel.
But if you can put these quibbles aside, The Green Hornet is an intermittently entertaining if ultimately forgettable piece of pop fizz.
The Green Hornet is screening nationally in Australia.
Director: Michel Gondry
Cast: Seth Rogan, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz, Tom Wilkinson
