Why I Liked... The Green Hornet (2011)

(Dir. Michel Gondry Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz)

The car was kick fucking ass. I mean, whoa.

But I’m not entirely sure that Gondry’s forte lies in making super hero films. Like, at all.

Ok, so here’s something I was pleased to find out-the film? Written by the Superbad guys! Which I was really pleased about because you know when you’re watching, say, a Spiderman film and all you can think about is how it would be so much easier with some back up? Or your mind inevitably drifts to how on earth a high school boy can not only sew his own super suit, but can also make all those gadgets? I mean, technicalities aside, those things had to have cost a lot of money to make.

Which is why supes like Iron Man and The Green Hornet kinda make a lot more sense. I mean, first of all, they’re both not measly teenagers (nothing against teens, I assure you I was once one myself), and second, they both have the brain power and money power to support themselves and their super hobbies. Sure, Britt Reid/The Green Hornet (Rogen) has Kato (Chou) to do all brain-y stuff, but we can easily believe that he has a massive garage filled with awesome looking cars.

Close, but no car-tato.

And uh yeah, so the script reflects all of that...which is nice. It also reflects how complete and utter comic book nerds (like yours truly) feel about the details of being a hero/vigilante, and how yeah, it kinda does make more sense to pretend to be a bad guy instead of dashing out the gate as a good guy. What? It does! Just think about it. It’ll come to you.

That said however, this is not a film for Michel Gondry. At all. In fact, if it weren’t for the 3D sequences (I watched this in 2D as I detest 3D, but you can still tell when the screen is trying to jump out at you), you probably wouldn’t be able to tell Gondry was even there. It just felt like he was reigning himself in for such a commercial film-would the average audience be able to handle Gondry’s wack-a-doodle visual style? Only when the 3D came into effect, they must have thought, as it was only when that happened that you could see any trace of Gondry.

Which is really sad, because I’m a fan. And it would’ve been really cool to see a super hero film that didn’t follow the regular narrative. I mean, ok-the script wasn’t that amazingly clever, but with Gondry’s typical visual direction, the film could have turned out so different...and potentially so awesome.

Which is why he should probably go back to music videos.

Ooh, was that mean?

Oh, snap.

In other unsurprising news, the female role was reduced to a pitiful position of, well, almost nothing. She, Lenore Case (Diaz) held little to no value in this film, and almost surprisingly, she didn’t even have a half-naked scene to attempt to validate her being there.

In short, it could’ve been better, but...yeah. No.