Well, probably anyone. In fact The Green Hornet feels like it was made entirely by the second unit director, except for two or three visually staggering sequences that Gondry was woken up for to justify his hiring. Apart from those, all you're left with is an adequate but entirely predictable, seen-it-all-before, non-super hero film.
It's not all bad: Christoph Waltz is massively watchable despite being saddled with the one-dimensional villain role, and Jay Chou as Kato is a laconic genius, although his ass-kicking displays occasionally get lost in amongst the FX. Still, he does possess some miraculous skillz:
Now I'm not the biggest Seth Rogen fan in the world (that would probably be Seth Rogen), but it's pretty obvious to anyone with eyes that he's tragically miscast in this. His grating, growly shouting thing becomes tiresome pretty quickly, and for an action-comedy with one of the world's highest-profile comedy stars, it's a bit of a LOL-vaccuum.
As for Cameron Diaz, the world's least believable temp secretary and pretty much the only woman with a speaking part in the whole film, well, she gets the most thankless role going. She gets no action (literally) and no laffs, and even McG knows she's perfectly capable of both.
Oh and unsurprisingly the 3D is utterly pointless until the animated end credits, which are amazaboggling.
Still, ain't none of it as bad as the IMDb's The Green Hornet page which, to promote the film, has been rendered completely unreadable by the design monkeys, who've gone for a clever green-writing-on-a-green-background theme:
In short: This week's second-best film with a colour in the title. Blue Valentine doesn't have super-slo-mo smackdowns but it is funnier.
GREEN HORNET sounds like a social network for battery car curb crawlers. Will your stinging review stir up 127 or more imitations?
ReplyDeleteWhere is Noomi Rapace 'The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest' just when you need her?
I take the review as a warning and thus informed will avoid the film.
Saw this this morning. It's enjoyable but complete fluff. One thing going for it, I have no idea how they did the shot immediately following Waltz shouting 'Get me the head of the Green Hornet', it boggled my brain juices
ReplyDeleteKnew it looked rather pants and blah, even with Gondry associated with it. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteworst film ever
ReplyDeleteWhile The Green Hornet is a passable time killer, film lovers might go into shock that such an unremarkable piece of Hollywood mulch was helmed by French whiz kid Michel Gondry. I wish there was more here, but it was an OK popcorn treat. Good review, check out mine when you can!
ReplyDelete