Superhero films can be forgiven many things – daft plots, bad acting, silly scripts, even pre-teenage girls swearing, but the one thing they really shouldn’t be is dull. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why this latest addition to the canon is so plain boring – after all, it has a charming lead actor, an interesting director and is based on several quirky, fresh ideas. But dull it remains.
There are a couple of neat twists on the usual set-up – Seth Rogen’s Britt Reid is a millionaire like Bruce Wayne, but he is a bit of a waster and likes a party. For a superhero he has a bit of a gut. Also his take on crime-fighting is to set his Green Hornet up as the villain, so the police will believe LA’s drug gangs have simply imploded and are picking each other off. Not having much experience in the field, he persuades Cameron Diaz’s trainee journo (trainee? At her age? Time to try something else…) to tell him how a bad guy behaves, then copies her predictions.
All fair cop, and Rogen’s Reid is a charming, funny presence on screen. We first meet him as a boy ignored by terrifying media owner dad, Tom Wilkinson (not terrifying enough, terrible accent). When dad dies and leaves Reid a newspaper, the Daily Sentinel, to run, Reid merely carries on his party lifestyle in a huge house. When he befriends his dad’s chauffeur, Kato (Chou), they invent all sorts of super-cars and weapons, and with Kato’s handy martial arts, take to the streets to wipe out crime. When they both fall for Diaz though, things get complicated, and there is also the small problem of criminal mastermind Chudnofsky (Waltz) who seems determined to control the drugs traffic in LA.
Let’s start with Waltz. This wonderful actor, who won an Oscar for Inglourious Basterds playing a genuinely evil, creepy Nazi, has to be perfect casting as the baddie, surely? Actually, no – he carries little threat, and even jokes about his lack of charisma, is one of many running gags that wares very thin. An early set-up scene, in which he visits a rival gang leader in an LA nightclub, takes an age to make a very simple point – he’s a baddie, with a double-barrelled gun.
The Hornet’s sidekick Kato is another problem – Chou’s English is hard to understand sometimes, and he carries little screen weight. He is handy with the karate and driving fast, but that’s about it. As for Diaz, by the time she answers the door dressed in her pants it pretty much sums up the film’s lack of ideas, and she’s as witless as she was in Knight and Day.
Yet Rogan is such a watchable screen presence it’s difficult to dismiss the film completely. He is sharp, engaging and has a great voice, although actually he is more at ease playing the slob at the start of the film than the superhero he becomes. He shouts and runs through all of the action sequences with gusto, even though they seem to go on forever. If car chases are your thing you’ll be happy enough here, if not it will feel like being dragged along tarmac by your hair.
Michel Gondry is best known for directing quirky indie dramas like Eternal Sunshine and Be Kind Rewind, which had a warmth and humanity at their heart. He’s an interesting choice but here seems swamped by the material, revealing little visual flair and action sequences by numbers, almost as if he was replaced by another director half-way through.
Overall verdict: With such talent involved this is a strangely unengaging misfire, which seems to go on forever. A few good jokes, but that’s about it.
Reviewer: Mike Martin
