Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

Theoretically speaking ‘The Green Hornet – in 3D’… though I refused to see the post process 3D version… could be the worst superhero movie ever made. I’m talking worst than Roger Corman’s interpretation of the ‘Fantastic Four’ or Albert Pyun’s version of ‘Captain America’. It’s just an awful, awful superhero movie. Awful. But it is a halfway decent comedy. So if you want to watch a superhero movie that’s better than this one, then I’d check to see if you could get a hold of a copy of the TV movie ‘The Trial of the Incredible Hulk’ in which my main man Rex Smith makes an appearance as the ‘Daredevil’. That’s a better superhero movie than this one. But if you’re looking for what I think is the funniest movie of the year… fully recognizing that the year is all of two weeks old… then ‘The Green Hornet’ is it.

Seth Rogen is spoiled playboy Britt Reid. Stopping right here, if you haven’t seen this movie and you plan to see this movie and you have any kind of problem with Seth Rogen and his singular style of performing then you would be better served smashing your kneecap with a ball peen hammer than watching this movie for it is a Seth Rogen movie to its very core. Just letting you know. I don’t have a problem with Seth so we will move on.

The trailer for this movie lays out almost completely what this movie is about but we have Britt Reid whose father James (Tom Wilkinson) is found dead and thus Britt is stuck running his media empire. Soon Britt becomes fast friends with dad’s mechanic Kato (Jay Chou) who is a mix of James Bond’s Q, crossed with a healthy dose of Bruce Lee with the maturity level of… well… a Seth Rogen character in most of the movies he’s been in. Yes, two Seth Rogen style characters with one speaking broken English. It’s like ‘Pineapple Express’ with neither character able to use the statement ‘I was high’ as an excuse.

So these two immature dudes, after a night of immaturity, get the bright idea to become crime fighters. By breaking the law. Crazy… like a fox baby. There’s a bad guy to deal with in meth dealer Chudnofsky (Christopher Waltz), a slimy District Attorney is hanging around in Scanlon (David Harbour) and a fine female who serves almost no purpose in the lovely Lenore (Cameron Diaz). We love us some Cameron Diaz here at the FCU and we are glad she got paid but they could’ve gotten any good

looking woman to do what Cam D. did in this movie. Anybody. Could’ve saved themselves a few bucks in the process. Actually when I think about it, outside of Seth Rogen because only Seth Rogen can really do what he does, but the filmmakers could’ve gotten a whole bunch of folks we’ve never heard of to be in this movie. Christopher Waltz was a great bad guy in ‘Inglorious Basterds’…. here, not so much. Anybody could’ve done that. Tom Wilkinson is fantastic actor, but any old guy that can read could’ve done what was asked of James Reid in this movie. This also includes Jay Chou. The man is a pop singer, not a martial artist. Thus any Asian dude with the help of CGI and camera tricks could’ve pulled that off. I did notice Jay’s sweet handles with the rock. I’m sorry… I observed that Mr. Chou could dribble a basketball very well. We saw Jay in ‘Kung Fu Dunk’ so we know that wasn’t a camera trick. Regardless, action, mayhem, chaos and nonsensical levels of immaturity shall ensue. Guaranteed.

I remember back in ’89 when the new ‘Batman’ movie came out and the Batman purist were mortified, particularly with the casting of Michael Keaton, that the new movie would display levels of buffoonery similar to the television show. As it turns out they had nothing worry about. I don’t know if there are ‘Green Hornet’ purist out there but the TV show was a little more serious than the Batman TV show so maybe the Green Hornet Purist out there would prefer a little more buffoonery in their Green Hornet mix. Well let me tell you that this version of the Green Hornet is Buffoonery Personified. James Franco makes an early cameo as a club owner with Franco channeling the ghost of Bobby DeNiro for his character, if Deniro was dead that is, with a mix of Rupert Pufkin meets Jake LaMotta. It was complete and total buffoonery but it was also pretty damn funny.

This movie, to me at least, was consistently funny but that’s all it was. As we stated earlier it’s an absolutely awful superhero movie mainly because there’s nothing heroic about these cats. They’re idiots. Those clowns from ‘Jackass’ are Rhodes Scholars by comparison. I can’t recall any point in the movie that I was actually rooting for these heroes, and usually a good villain helps the heroes but Chuvnofsky was such a weak villain I couldn’t root for him either. To make matters worse, at least as far as this being an action movie, Michel Gondry’s style of directing isn’t slanted towards action films, and it shows. However if you saw his film ‘Be Kind, Please Rewind’ his style is slanted towards managing idiots. And it shows. I read somewhere that stated that Seth Rogen was miscast. Actually, considering he helped write this thing, he was perfectly cast. Seth knows what Seth can do. The whole concept of this movie might’ve been miscast, but that’s neither here nor there about now. I’ve also read that the post 3D in this movie is probably the best post 3D to date. Which basically means it sucks the least.

All I’m saying is that if you don’t find the infantile, frat-boy comedy in this basically brain dead movie amusing, then there is nothing here for you. Absolutely nothing. Quick story… after I saw this movie there were a couple of people who actually stood up and clapped. This was quickly followed by a dude who stood and said ‘What the hell are you clapping for?’ That was funny. Funnier still when they started fighting. The comedy in this movie clearly didn’t move this cat. I thought it was funny, but it’s still the worst superhero movie ever made.