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Title: The Green Hornet
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, there is some strong language and graphic nudity. Recommended for ages 17 and up. |
What the heck is Cameron Diaz doing in this movie? When I say those words I realize that this is the only significant thing I remember from Michael Godry's “The Green Hornet,” a movie that has a stupidly simple script when it's not being filled with wall-to-wall stupid action sequences. At one point in the middle of the movie Cameron Diaz shows up as the secretary to Britt Reid (Seth Rogen). Britt is using her for information on what the Green Hornet, who is a independent villain who is taking over as major crime lord from Bloodnofsky (Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz...who has played much better villains before).
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He wants this information because he's the Green Hornet, and he's pretending to be a bad guy to get close to the bad guys, but he doesn't know what he's doing so he hired a secretary to tell him what a bad guy would do. Yeah, I'm not sure if any of that makes sense to me either. Originally planned as a major summer release, “The Green Hornet” has instead been released in the dead of January, the dumping ground for movies that studios have no faith in. This is sort of a smart move because the movie is expensive, looks to be promising on the surface, and is even being released in the high quality IMAX 3D (with the exception of the theater's who will be holding onto “TRON: Legacy”...which is starting to look better in retrospect).
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But the movie is just so stupid it's hard to know where to begin. While it doesn't truly get boring the script is beyond stupid, with characters saying and doing stupid things just because the stupid screenplay wants them to. Britt is nothing more than a goofy party animal, but in order for him to meet his eventual sidekick Kato (Jay Chou) he has to flip out because there's no leaf in his coffee. Cameron Diaz does nothing but walk around smiling and giggling a lot. I kept expecting her to be a twist because...well, why would you hire Cameron Diaz to play the secretary? Again: Why is she in this movie? Tom Wilkinson also shows up as Britts father, who is such a royal pain that we honestly don't blame Britt for hating him so much.
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I could go on and on, but the movie really just feels like a bunch of miscasting and misfiring on all levels. Seth Rogen is a funny guy, but he lacks the chops to make Britt a very complicated character. Kato is a cool guy and is arguably the true Green Hornet, but the actor who plays him (as a friend of mine informed me) is a famous pop Taiwan singer, and his English sounds broken and his acting is not helped much by this fact. To give such a big role to someone who seems to be being fed lines of dialog while the camera isn't rolling strikes me as an odd choice to make. Director Michael Gondry is known more for his trippy mind benders than his action films (one of his previous films was “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”).
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A couple of the action sequences have visual intrigue, but the car chases overpower all the interesting visuals and do nothing but fill the screen with noise. And are we even supposed to root for the heros when they run police cars off the road? Never mind. The only one who seems to try once in awhile is Waltz, who makes the villain quirky enough at first that you sort of hope this will turn out good. That too eventually becomes a caricature. That this movie is still the most interesting new release in theaters despite almost nothing working speaks volumes about how good the movies in January really are sometimes. This won't go down as a god awful mess like Pitof's “Catwoman” did, but it's easily very forgettable. Finally, why the flipping heck is Cameron Diaz in this movie?
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