Susan Granger’s review of “The Green Hornet” (Columbia Pictures)
It’s more of a superhero send-up than an update of the popular ‘30s radio serial and short-lived ‘60s TV series, which introduced very young and talented Bruce Lee.
When obnoxious, hard-partying slacker Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) unexpectedly becomes heir to the newspaper owned by his wealthy, influential, yet despised father, publisher James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), he and his dad’s super-efficient, gadget-minded valet/mechanic Kato (Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou) turn into Daily Sentinel front-page vigilante crime-fighters, cruising around the city of Los Angeles in Black Beauty, an old Chrysler Imperial sedan slickly tricked out with a new grille and a staggering assortment of weaponry. Hovering on the sidelines are Britt’s secretary, Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), a crooked district attorney (David Harbour), the newspaper editor (Edward James Olmos) and villainous Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz from “Inglourious Basterds”).
After spending more than 20 years bouncing around ‘in development hell’ with rumored participation by George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Jake Gyllenhaal and independent filmmaker Kevin Smith, the Green Hornet concept has been reduced to just another boorishly irreverent bromedy (a.k.a. buddy-comedy) that’s studded with implicitly gay innuendos like “Girls are such a drag. Thank God, we have each other.”
Originally debuting on January 31, 1936, on Detroit radio station WXYZ, the characters were created by George W. Trendle, as a follow-up to his successful “The Lone Ranger” with the masked avenger’s alter ego, Britt Reid, said to be the great nephew of The Lone Ranger. Now they’ve been ineptly reconceived by Seth Rogen (“Knocked Up,” “40 Year-old Virgin”) and his longtime friend/partner Evan Goldberg (“Superbad,” “Pineapple Express”), so perhaps there’s little that decidedly unconventional, French director Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Be Kind Rewind”) can do, particularly since staging imaginative action sequences is far from his sphere of experience. And the cheesy post-production conversion to 3-D is simply a waste of ticket-buyers’ money, except for the closing-credit pop art sequence.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Green Hornet” flies in with a fiasco-like 5, sustained only by its FX.
