Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Green Hornet is a mystery film. The mystery is in how so many talented people working together could end up producing something this mind-bogglingly lame? Consider the talent involved: Michael Gondry, Director - winner of Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, director of imaginative films like The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, and Be Kind Rewind. Seth Rogen, Writer and actor - winner of Emmy award for comedy writing Jay Chou, actor - one of the top singers, song-writers and actors in the Chinese movie and music scene today Tom Wilkinson, actor - twice nominated for Oscar, winner of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild awards Christoph Waltz, actor - winner of Oscar, BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards for Best Supporting Actor Edward James Olmos, actor - nominated for Oscar, winner of Golden Globe and Emmy awards David Harbour, actor - nominated for Tony award Cameron Diaz, actress - nominated for BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild awards, winner of Golden Globe award James Newton Howard, musical score - multiple nominations for Grammy, Emmy and Oscar awards for music scores and songs, winner of Grammy and Emmy for music score and song All this talent - and a final budget somewhere around $120M - and yet all we have to show for it is an inane half-baked script, badly acted, made as a 3D film for no discernable reason whatsoever, and arguably one of the worst adaptations of a super-hero character ever made into a film, which considering the genre is really saying something (it's worse than Daredevil, Catwoman, Ghost Rider and all Punisher movies combined). There are so many things wrong with The Green Hornet that it's really hard to know where to begin. It was a bad sign that, five minutes into the film I was already getting a really bad feeling about what I was seeing and was wondering if it was too late to slip out and catch some other movie instead. Having sat through the entire god-awful mess, I can tell you know that if you've seen the trailer for the film, then you've already seen 90 percent of everything worth seeing in the entire movie. If you have not seen the movie yet, then you can still spare yourself the experience of enduring a complete waste of your time. It's almost a toss-up as to what the biggest single problem was: Seth Rogen or the script. Seth Rogen, who can be hysterically funny, is lost here, as if he wandered onto the wrong movie set by mistake. At no point even remotely believable as an action hero, he mugs his way through the film like he's improvising a sequel to Pineapple Express, completely trashing the Brit Reid / Green Hornet character. As for the rest of the cast, even the best actors cannot overcome bad characterizations and criminally lame dialogue. Christoph Waltz, the truly charming and chilling villain Col. Landa in Inglourious Basterds, in this film is reduced to being Chudnofsky, about the lamest crime lord the film world has ever seen: Chudnofsky: "You said I'm boring. My gun has 2 barrels - that's not boring and it was very difficult to make." Tupper: "Look, trust me, a grown man wearing a mask is a little scarier than a guy wearing a suit." Chudnofsky: "You're not pleased with my suit? Does it fail to fill you with fear?" Tupper: "Sorry, I didn't mean to disrespect." Chudnofsky: "Do you have any idea how many great people have killed in a suit?" Chudnofsky: "I was gonna have people call me 'Bloodnofsky'. I was gonna wear red for blood, get it? That's scary _and_ cool." Edward James Olmos, as the newspaper's top editor, spends most of his time scowling and looking like all he wants to do is get paid so he can get off the set and out of this mess. Tom Wilkinson as Brit Reid's publisher father is probably the luckiest actor in the film as he gets to die about 10 minutes into the movie. Cameron Diaz is there presumably as the love interest, which seems strange after the fact as the script has her rejecting and then beating up on both Rogen and Chou. To make matters worse, there is zero chemistry between her and Rogen or Chou, a lack that is made even starker by the fact that Diaz is ten years older than Rogen and seven years older than Chou. This didn't have to happen. This could have been either a really funny comedy or a great straight pulp-hero action film, but it feels as if no one involved could ever make up their mind and so it ends up being neither. There are a few funny bits (almost all of which are in the trailer) but most of the film just isn't funny. The jokes suffer from being lame and from atrociously bad timing. Everyone's timing feels off, even in the parts that are supposed to be just straight acting. It's like watching the cast doing a walk-through for the first time. Everything feels disjointed, disconnected. Adding to the stiffness are huge lumps of exposition where characters relate either what they've done or what they're going to do, and other scenes where it seems like no one could figure out what they were supposed to do so they just improvised. The only halfway decent thing about Green Hornet is Jay Chou as an updated and hyper-competent Kato, but even his character is crippled by inanities. Like the fact that he's supposed to be a super-tough martial arts street-fighter... but he keeps going down after getting kicked in the balls. Or pushed into a swimming pool where it's revealed he can't swim. Or having to engage in a ridiculously long fight with Rogen whose sorry butt he apparently cannot manage to successfully kick, in spite of his previously having taken out entire groups of armed thugs without breaking a sweat. Among the many things in The Green Hornet that obviously weren't thought through is that there was apparently no thought given to updating the Green Hornet's car, Black Beauty, to something that fits the 00's or the 10's. Instead, they're driving around in this relic that looks like it was found on an auto lot that shut down back in the 60's. And to add to the absurdity, there's a turntable in it. Not an Ipod or a CD player or even a tape deck; it's a _turntable_. Playing an LP. While the car is on the road. Without skipping. About the only reason I could recommend this film to anyone is if you're a Jay Chou fan and want to hear him sing (in Mandarin) during the ending credits. Other than that, if you're old enough to actually remember the original Green Hornet from radio or television, avoid this film like the plague; you're not only in for a disappointment, you're in for watching a classic character utterly trashed. If you're completely unfamilliar with the original Green Hornet, then just avoid this film to save yourself from wasting two hours and the cost of a DVD. And if for some reason someone gives you the DVD, then just use it as a coaster while you watch a decent movie instead.