Movie Review - 'The Green Hornet'

The Green Hornet Starring Seth Rogen, Jay Chou and Christoph Waltz Directed by Michel Gondry Rated PG

To say that Seth Rogen is woefully miscast in the lead role of The Green Hornet would be a vast understatement. While Rogen's slacker, stoner persona has served him well in comedies like Knocked Up and The 40-Year Old Virgin, his decision to portray Britt Reid in that same vein ultimately ends up ruining this film.

Rogen, who co-wrote the script with his writing partner Evan Goldberg, presents Reid as a spoiled, misogynistic rich kid floating through life with no real ambition or purpose. There is nothing particularly likable or relatable about Reid, though he is meant to be the hero of the film. His decision to become a masked vigilante is one that seems to lack any real conviction and instead simply seems like a way for him to pass the time.

Making matters worse, Reid spends most of the film being jealous of Kato (Jay Chou), his far-more-talented sidekick/chauffeur who does all of the heavy lifting on their crime fighting expeditions, and sexually harassing his intellectually-superior secretary Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), who for some unknown reason tolerates his inappropriate behavior. While he occasionally rattles off a funny one-liner, most of the time he is so loathsome that you have no reason to root for him and thus never feel fully invested in his story.

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Trailer - Seth Rogen's 'The Green Hornet'

At long last, there's a trailer (and new photos) for The Green Hornet. Seth Rogen was handed the project about three years ago, I guess, and the plan was he'd write it and star and then Sony/Columbia would get a director and off we'd go with an updated superhero movie - although he's not a superhero - with a comedic spin.

That was the plan, but Stephen Chow, who would have been a fantastic director for this, split, leaving two holes to fill because he was also the film's Kato. So, replacing him are Jay Chou on screen and Michel Gondry behind the camera. Sony pushed the release dates a couple times and now it opens in January, which isn't very reassuring. And yet...the trailer's not bad. It certainly doesn't show signs of the plague, and Jay Chou has a pretty good opportunity to run away with this thing. There are certainly some interesting shots here, but if I had to guess, I'd still say Seth Rogen will do more harm than good, because the comedy is pretty flat.

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'Green Hornet' Now Set for IMAX in January 2011

I think this might be a big roll of the dice for Sony, but in an effort to save face, the studio might just have to do that. The Green Hornet, the adaptation that has brought the phrase "much-maligned" back in vogue, is now set to open in IMAX theaters on January 14, 2011, the same day it rolls out in 2-D and 3-D format theaters across the country.

You're right: Mid-January is a bad time for this sort of thing, or at least a suspicious time. Of course, Avatar did OK in 3-D and IMAX this past January, but let's not kid ourselves here. Green Hornet has featured a directorial replacement, which also prompted a co-star replacement, a star and writer - Seth Rogen - who was more or less admittedly apathetic about the source material he was bringing to the screen, production delays and two release date changes.

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Sony Unhappy With Seth Rogen's 'Green Hornet'?

Is bad news on the horizon for Green Hornet? IESB writes that both the upcoming Seth Rogen action comedy and Warner Bros. comic book adaptation, Lobo, are trending down. The difference is that nobody's started filming Lobo yet and Green Hornet is essentially in the can.

The word is Sony executives just aren't happy with what we've they've seen from Michel Gondry's movie. The tone, not surprisingly, is deemed too "campy," Gondry's work isn't impressing anyone, and neither is Rogen. "The feeling at Sony is the movie is a disaster," says IESB, which I can't say comes as any great shock.

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Gondry Wants Ellen Page for Time Travel Movie

Michel Gondry is one of those guys that should be allowed to make movies his way. I'm not sure that's what we'll get with The Green Hornet at the end of the year, because Seth Rogen brings his own stuff to a film, as well, and of course, it's an expensive studio project. I think Gondry might be better off in his own little world at least most of the time.

Gondry tells MTV that he'd like to do just that, only with one of those colossal Hollywood budgets, and he has the whole thing pretty well mapped out already. "I'd like to do a movie of this size with my own story, which would be quite amazing. But we'll see," said the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director. "I'm developing a screenplay with a writer right now about kids who travel [into] the future by mistake and a machine [that] keeps people younger...ehhh, it's complicated to explain," Gondry added.

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