Review: The Green Hornet

A few years ago, Vancouver-bred funnymen Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg wrote a charming teen buddy comedy called Superbad. Now, the two have penned a superhero buddy comedy that's just plain bad.

The duos first blockbuster, The Green Hornet is a mind-numbing mess, from its ineptly choreographed action to its misfired jokes to its lame-o 3D. Like their hero's chlorophyll-coloured knockout gas, this Hornet doesn't sting it stinks.

Right from the get-go, you sense a grinding determination to make this movie funny. Not surprisingly, it rarely is.

Granted, they werent working with the most promising source material. A less inventive precursor to Batman, The Green Hornet enjoyed its best days as a Golden Age radio serial in the 1930s and 40s. Its only noteworthy revival was a television series in the 1960s, remembered mainly as the launch pad for future martial arts idol Bruce Lee. To bring this creaky vehicle up to speed for the 21st century required wit and imagination, which is what Rogen, Goldberg and director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) are usually known for.

But that's not what we get here. Instead, Rogen, who also stars as the titular masked man, trades on the rapidly diminishing appeal of his slacker persona, while Gondrys signature whimsy is downgraded to goofy desperation. Right from the get-go, you sense a grinding determination to make this movie funny. Not surprisingly, it rarely is.

Rogen plays Britt Reid, the no-account son and heir of a dynamic L.A. newspaper publisher (Tom Wilkinson). After his dad dies from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, Britt, who had no love for the old man, shrugs off the heavy mantle of press baron and continues his hard-partying ways. That is, until he stumbles upon an unknown member of his fathers house staff, Kato (Jay Chou). This Chinese orphan turns out to be a jack-of-all-trades genius, combining awesome martial-arts skills with mechanical wizardry and the ability to brew the perfect cup of cappuccino.

Britt decides that he and Kato have been wasting their potential and proposes they team up to fight crime. His big brainstorm is that they should pose as criminals themselves to infiltrate the mob. So, while Kato turns his hand to converting one of Reid Seniors vintage Chrysler Imperials into the weapons-wielding Black Beauty, Britt belatedly takes control of the paper and launches a public campaign against his new alter ego, the Green Hornet therebygetting the attention ofthe local crime syndicate. (His superhero alias, like just about everything else in this unbalanced partnership, comes from Kato. Britt was favouring "the Green Bee.")

Once the Hornet and his sidekick start making headlines, they rouse the ire of L.A.s criminal kingpin, a humorless megalomaniac with a pudding-bowl haircut named Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz). Waltz, the Austrian actor who shot to international fame with his slippery Nazi role in Inglourious Basterds, is among the squandered talents here. Hes amusing as the vicious but deeply uncool Chudnofsky, but the script doesnt build on his character. His funniest bit comes right at the top, in a showdown with the ubiquitous James Franco as a smarmy, meth-dealing club owner. Francos cameo is a crazy symphony of facial tics, countered by Waltzs spoof of stony Slavic seriousness. Its only meant to whet our appetite for what promises to be cartoonish parody of the superhero genre. Instead, it turns out to be the movies comic highlight.

Rogen is fine if you like his shtick, but his success as an actor seems to depend on his comic foil, whether its Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up or Franco in Pineapple Express. Chous laconic Kato just doesnt measure up. The Taiwanese actor-musician may have a sleek build and brooding good looks that recall Bruce Lee, but his comic timing, at least in English, is off. You keep imagining what a bona fide comedian like John Cho (Harold & Kumar) would do with the part.

Then theres Cameron Diaz as Lenore Case, Britts personal secretary and an amateur criminologist, who unwittingly helps the Green Hornet plot his moves. Im not a fan of Diaz, but I felt sorry for the way shes used here. When she isnt the butt of age jokes, shes continually fending off the aggressive advances of Britt and Kato. Its like the movie is apologizing for hiring a 38-year-old actress to be the love interest by constantly reminding us of how hot she still is.

But then, there are a lot of skewed intentions here. The writers also feel sheepish about having an Asian sidekick to a white hero, so they go out of their way to show how brilliant Kato is. However, at the end of the day it's the underachieving white dude who still calls the shots. Maybe The Green Hornet was meant to contain a veiled message about continued racial inequality in America.

If it wasn't for a short fantasy sequence near the end, youd never peg this as a Gondry film. On the other hand, the follies of the 3D bandwagon are written all over it. This is yet another blockbuster that was shot conventionally, then transferred to 3D, and once again the result detracts from, rather than enhances, the movie. You know what to expect: images than look like cardboard cutouts, weak attempts to hurl objects into our faces and an overall dimness that makes frenetic action sequences almost impossible to follow.

I suspect that The Green Hornet will join Batman & Robin and Daredevil in the fanboys lexicon as a synonym for "fail." As for Gondry, he can commiserate with the likes of Ang Lee (Hulk) as one more gifted director defeated by the demands of the superhero genre.

The Green Hornet opens Jan. 14.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.