'Green Hornet' remake a real crime
On paper, “The Green Hornet” probably looked like an inspired concept.
Take the old Green Hornet premise — a smart and rich white newspaper publisher named Britt Reed goes masked vigilante with help from his Asian manservant Kato — and give it a contemporary, comic twist.
So, the publisher is now a bumbling, immature party animal (played by Seth Rogen, no less) who inherits his father's empire and newspaper, the Sentinel, but doesn't know what to do with it.
Kato, meanwhile, is no manservant. He's a mechanical and engineering genius, martial arts warrior, piano-prodigy, weapons expert and coffee-making artiste.
Together, they decide to protect the citizens of L.A. by becoming good guys pretending to be bad guys who fight crime without badges.
Sounds irresistible, right?
Yet, director Michel Gondry finds all sorts of ways to make it extremely resistible.
His 3-D action movie never finds its proper comic tone, a balance between superhero camp and self-aware humor.
Worse, this film turns the popular radio/TV super vigilante into a noisy, thoughtless, lazy frat boy comedy with Rogen channeling a rom-com-grade Will Ferrell.
Taiwanese singer/actor Jay Chou's charisma-challenged Kato doesn't do any heavy lifting in the martial arts scenes. They've been shot with “Matrix” bullet-time effects, visually grabbing digital manipulations that could make the late Leslie Nielsen look like a kung fu master.
At the same time, the movie squanders actor Christoph Waltz — the chatty, joyously evil Nazi officer from Quentin Tarantino's “Inglourious Basterds” — by reducing his villainous Benjamin Chudnofsky to a lackluster baddie who wants to be a feared cool guy.
Meanwhile, Cameron Diaz plays Lenore, a journalism major who continues to work as a temp secretary for the insensitive Reed, even after he uses his position to pressure her into dates and a kiss.
Wait!
Was “The Green Hornet” supposed to take place in the 1950s? That would explain why Lenore didn't haul her boss into court or the HR office.
That would also explain why there are no cell phones, laptops, Kindles, GPS devices, or any high-tech gadgets used anywhere in L.A. by anybody.
Was Gondry or anyone else paying attention to details?
“Green Hornet” opens with a quick back-story showing how Reed's publisher magnate father (Tom Wilkinson) denied his son affection and attention, presumably turning him into the male version of Paris Hilton.
After his allergic dad dies of a bee-sting, Reed balks at taking the helm of the hugely profitable Sentinel, apparently the only American newspaper unaffected by the Internet.
No sooner do Reed and Kato take up vigilantism, “The Green Hornet” runs into a moral pothole.
During a car chase, the Black Beauty forces an L.A. squad car to flip upside down, crushing the top while crashing into a building. The police officer driving was certainly killed.
What does Reed shout?
“This is the greatest moment of my entire life!”Was Gondry or anyone else paying attention to context?
Late in #8220;The Green Hornet,#8221; we hear a flourish of Al Hirt's lip-torturing trumpet whipping through the breathless Green Hornet theme from the 1966 TV show.
In those nostalgic moments, baby boomers will recall Bruce Lee's series (not available on DVD yet) and fondly remember actor Van Williams as the title character.
Yes, Williams might have been bland and nondescript.
But, at least he wasn't a frat boy channeling Will Ferrell.
<b>“The Green Hornet”</b>
★ ½
<b>Starring:</b> Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz, Cameron Diaz
<b>Directed by:</b> Michel Gondry
<b>Other:</b> A Columbia Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for drug use, language, sexual situations, violence. 119 minutes.