The Green Hornet | Film Review

Story by Greg Bright 

| Published Jan 18, 2011

Generally, I like Seth Rogen. I like his nervous laugh, his inability to ever get comfortable in front of the camera and his somewhat cheesy but funny sense of humor. He truly is endearing; just an average guy who was in the right place at the right time and happened to get famous. He is a lot of things, but a true “star” he is not, and lacking that kills his latest flick “The Green Hornet.”

The film follows millionaire heir Brett Reid (Rogen) and his sidekick, Kato (Jay Chou), around as they decide to start fighting crime as masked vigilantes. Believe me when I say we follow them around -- rather aimlessly, it has to be said, and large chunks of this wandering are, for lack of a better word, awkward. Because often, nothing is really happening.

Director Michel Gondry seems just as lost as the audience on how this screenplay, written by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who wrote the great film “Superbad,” could have possibly been OK’d by any studio executive, and only gives attention to his “Kato vision,” a visual style that is the film’s only redeeming quality.

Eventually our heroes meet up with a (surprise!) corrupt politician (David Harbour) and LA’s most boring, and supposedly powerful, gangster, played by a Christoph Waltz who seems to have lost all his charisma and charm from “Inglourious Basterds.”

In the end, the good guys win as always, but at the cost of the audience’s attention span and my respect for Rogen as a writer.