Film Review: The Green Hornet

The Green Hornet fails on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin.

Let’s start by posing some basic questions such as “what was the film supposed to accomplish”? Turn a dumb concept into a clever film? Use $100 million dollars worth of effects to make us forget that the story is boring and banal? Destroy both the special effects and 3-D industry in a single film? The original concept of The Green Hornet was a 1930s radio series in which a newspaper publisher named Britt Reid becomes a wimpy superhero.

An ordinary guy with no superpowers or skills decides to fight crime so he’s forced to rely on his sidekick Kato (Taiwanese actor Jay Chou) to provide him with weapons, gadgets, and power. The film is all about the interplay between The Hornet and Kato, their relationship and their rivalry. In other words, this “Hornet” is superhero movie as a tongue in cheek, gay buddy comedy. The film was co-written and stars the amiable Seth Rogen (“Super Bad”) as The Green Hornet. The film also features Christoph Waltz (“Inglorious Basterds”) as the evil Chudnofsky and Cameron Diaz as love interest and journalism school graduate.

With its pseudo 3-D and lack of coherent story who cares what happens to this superhero? Ignore seeing this movie and you save yourself a headache and some pocket cash. Oh by the way the ending credits are cool and use 3-D effectively. Unfortunately you have to sit through the movie to get to them.

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