The Green Hornet (2011)

There has been considerable buzz in the past year or so about the casting of comic actor Seth Rogen in the title role of The Green Hornet, the latest resurrected crime-fighting superhero to flit across the silver screen. Does this casting really fly? Well, sort of, but it’s a mite too comical for its own good.

Originally a 1930s radio serial, The Green Hornet is most widely remembered from its incarnation as a 1966-67 TV series starring Van Williams and none other than Bruce Lee as the Hornet’s trusty sidekick, Kato. The movie acknowledges the immortal martial-arts star with a brief glimpse of his likeness. The series’ Billy May and Al Hirt theme music, a jazzy variant of “Flight of the Bumble Bee,” is also nicely included.

Despite some crossovers with Batman, the concurrent Adam West hit series, The Green Hornet didn’t quite catch on and was swatted from the schedule after only one season. After more than 40 years, nostalgia for these earlier versions is faint at best, so the time finally seems ripe to recycle the character for a new generation.

What we get is Seth Rogen in his usual curly-topped, grubby, wise-ass persona, only now he’s a lot richer. He’s Britt Reid, the spoiled playboy son of a newspaper owner/publisher (Tom Wilkinson, again cornering the market on morally corrupt, waspy businessman roles). After his father dies suddenly from an allergic reaction to a bee sting, Britt inherits everything, but he doesn’t know what to do with anything, including himself.

Dismissing the household staff and the advice of a long-time family confidant (Edward James Olmos in a wasted role), Britt discovers he has one cool guy left in his employ: Kato (Jay Chou), a mechanic who worked on Daddy Reid’s car collection. Kato instantly becomes the object of Britt’s overbearing man-crush because he’s not only a master of martial arts, but he also knows how to trick out a 1965 Chrysler with every conceivable weapon, gadget, and whirligig. And Kato makes one hell of a cup of coffee, too.

Thanks to a prologue that just made me feel sad for the dorky-looking kid cast as Seth Rogen as a child, it’s established that Britt has a thing for defending victims from potential crime, drawn to fight bad guys like a moth to a flame. He finally gets the inspiration to be a masked crimefighter, but not as a hero. Instead, he wants to be considered a mysterious villain, the better to get closer with the real criminals. So The Green Hornet is hatched, and with Kato also masked and behind the wheel, they tear through the streets in their supercharged Black Beauty, targeting “the head of all crime in L.A.” as he ridiculously labels himself, a Eurotrash worm named Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz).

I’ve never been a big fan of the whole crime-fighting superhero genre, but I was a little more inclined to like this one. The Green Hornet shares many common elements with the more well-known hero characters–secret identity, tragic history, masks, fighting for justice, skirting the law–but because he doesn’t fly, swing from webs, have superhuman powers, wear body armor, or take himself too seriously, he seems more interesting and relatable than that swarm of jokers whose monikers end in “Man.” He’s just a rich dude with a badass sidekick and an awesome ride, and those latter two features are the best things in the movie. Jay Chou is terrific as Kato, outshining Rogen throughout. And the Black Beauty looks so damn cool and kicks so much ass, showcased in some impressive action sequences, including a remarkable climax involving the car being driven inside the newspaper building.

But The Green Hornet’s biggest enemy may be Seth Rogen himself. Rogen’s a naturally funny guy with good comic timing and delivery. Although he does get a moment here or there to demonstrate his dramatic and action capabilities (particularly in a great hand-to-hand fight scene with Kato inside the Reid mansion), his comedic persona permeates the rest of the film and weakens it. There’s a whole subplot involving Cameron Diaz as Reid’s secretary that adds only a gnat of substance to the story; it’s merely an excuse to have cutesy faux-romantic comedy interaction with Rogen and Diaz, to set up a feeble romantic rivalry between Reid and Kato, and to position her character for any future sequels.

Likewise, Christoph Waltz, who deservedly won the Academy Award for his performance as the silky Nazi in Inglourious Basterds, seems undercut by the comedic elements here. He’s introduced with a great scene opposite an unbilled cameo from James Franco, but things go downhill later in the film when he’s forced to wear an ugly red suit, make a bad pun out of his character’s name, and attempt to create a villainous tagline like Samuel L. Jackson’s “Ezekiel 25:17” speech in Pulp Fiction. The cumulative effect takes the sting out of Waltz’s character, so he lacks any serious menace or villainy and comes across like a ripoff of Alan Rickman in Die Hard. That’s just not cricket, if you ask me.

Columbia Pictures hopes that The Green Hornet will spawn sequels, returning like seven-year locusts. Whether those plans mayfly in the future remains to be seen, but I certainly won’t get ants in my pants about them. Despite its few good qualities, The Green Hornet is ultimately kind of a borer, making me want to flea the theater for the comfort of my nest, where I can listen to The Beetles and try to forget how this movie really bugged me.