Cinema Snark: The Green Hornet

Sooooo yeah. I saw The Green Hornet on Saturday. Basically, this character has been around for a long-ass time, so it's not surprising that they made a new big-screen adaptation. I mean, this is the age of superhero movies and whatnot. My one big question, though, is why they felt the need to make it like this.

As I understand the character, the Green Hornet is supposed to be both debonair and badass. Seth Rogen, who plays the role this time around, is neither of those things. Of course, this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing in and of itself; I love it when actors are adventurous enough to take parts outside their usual type. Nothing showcases an actor's talents better, provided he does it well. I mean, sure, Seth Rogen is a bit overweight and a generally comical fellow, but it would actually have been pretty cool to let him show off a darker, grittier side. Not that the movie would need to be completely serious, of course--part of the fun of the superhero genre is that you generally don't have to take it too seriously.

The problem here, however, is that they don't take the material seriously enough. It feels like they bent the original character to fit Seth Rogen's personality instead of actually finding someone who was right for the part, or actually making him do something other than being a drunken bumbling jackass for once. Perish the thought.

Jay Chou is suitably entertaining and badass as Kato, the brains and brawn and pretty much everything else of the duo. His prominence is understandable; Kato has been overshadowing the Green Hornet ever since he was played by Bruce motherfucking Lee. But here, it's not just a badass sidekick with a slightly less badass boss--Seth Rogen doesn't even come close. To illustrate:

Hierarchy of Awesome
1. Jay Chou
2-4. The three Black Beauties
5. The gas gun
6. The coffee machine
7. Everything else
8. ????
9. Profit
9. Seth Rogen

And that's not even counting the villain. There's a term for Rogen's version of Britt Reid, wealthy newspaper owner by day and costumed vigilante by night: Too Dumb to Live. He's a spoiled, lazy, bumbling, pants-on-head retarded douchebag who also happens to be a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen. He's pretty much the bro-iest bro that ever bro'd. Basically all he has going for him is that he's kinda funny sometimes.

In other words, he's fucking useless. And then he decides that he wants to be a vigilante.

Somehow, he doesn't get his dumb ass killed. This severely stretches the limits of my willing suspension of disbelief. I mean, when the title character in Kick-Ass decides to put on a costume and fight crime, he gets the living shit beaten out of him on a regular basis--but Rogen makes it through the movie largely unscathed. Hell, the worst beating Britt Reid gets is from his best friend Kato, because the former is being a delusional asshole who thinks (for some godforsaken reason) that he could survive as a vigilante for more than fifteen minutes without the help of the latter. It's pathetic.

The whole rich, irresponsible playboy thing has some parallels to Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, but the difference is that Wayne is just acting and Stark is a fucking genius who builds all his gadgets himself--and both of them are pretty damn good at the whole vigilante thing. That persona is much less charming when the character in question has no skills and few (if any) redeeming characteristics.

Most of the supporting characters are little more than cardboard cutouts, because this movie is really just about Britt and Kato and their inexplicable bromance. Cameron Diaz, as always, plays Cameron Diaz, with her usual amount of charisma (hint: it's not very much). Christoph Waltz plays Chudnofsky, a severely neutered version of Hans Landa from Inglourious Basterds--all the cheerfulness is still there, but it's not as unsettling because his darker extremes are much less, well, dark. His behavior is predictable and he's not very threatening, but he's still my second favorite thing in the movie after Jay Chou because he's Christoph Waltz and he has a gun that's basically two guns welded together.

The action sequences are appropriately entertaining, though they don't really do anything that hasn't been done better many other times. Visually speaking, there are some interesting surrealist directorial flourishes that pop up from time to time, but they generally feel out of place because the rest of the movie is shot in a pretty straightforward manner. The dialogue ranges from amusing to flat, without ever really reaching any great heights or abysmal depths. Honestly, if they were going to make this movie a comedy, they should have made it funnier.

All in all, it's a thoroughly average movie. It has its moments, but you're probably better off renting it. Here, I'll even sum up the movie for you:

Asians are awesome and they can do anything. The end.