Hornet leaves audience feeling green

If ever there was a movie early this year that failed to capitalize on a director’s and co-star’s talents, this is it. Did Michel Gondry phone this one in or what?

The answer, sadly, is yes. But then, everyone else didn’t seem to work too hard on this Green Hornet remake penned by star Seth Rogen and right-hand-man Evan Goldberg. It’s a paean to a TV show that was based on an early superhero radio show in the vein of Batman. In fact, Batman was the unlikely copycat but so much better than this tripe.

Rogen plays Britt Reid, the adult son of newspaper magnate James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), a stern and repressive father figure. At least that’s what we’re meant to believe since his time on the screen lasts about one minute before he dies, leaving Britt the publishing mantle.

It’s a reach in logic since Britt doesn’t seem to have a career except as a stay-at-home party boy, a kind of playboy who drinks, frolics and gets into mischief, making the news for all the wrong reasons. Imagining him at the helm of a major daily is like putting a blind man in the captain’s chair of a ship in Iceberg Ocean. Nothing good can come of it.

He befriends Kato (Jay Chou), the elder Reid’s go-to guy and maker of fine cups of coffee. He’s a Renaissance man, a master of karate and piano, not to mention a genius at mechanical inventions. That last skill comes into play later when a Hornet-mobile is required.

Without any other compelling purpose in their lives both find they have a taste for protecting people from evil forces, specifically the fictional Los Angeles crime lord Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), a Russian mobster hell-bent on power over all criminal elements in the city. Chudnofsky takes the Hornet for an interloper so a turf war begins.

Somewhere in the middle is Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), Reid’s secretary from the temp agency, who just happens to have a background in journalism and a degree in criminology. This is a token role, but then most of the other players seem to have some token quality about them.

Chou is a king of Asian cinema and a huge pop star but in this case is the butt of much of Seth Rogen’s slacker script. I enjoyed his character the most and he had several slow-motion fight sequences that will surely satisfy a key segment of the audience. Waltz won an Oscar for his brilliant menace in Inglourious Basterds and he does as much as he can to reprise that effort with as little energy as possible.

Let’s completely ignore Rogen as the star and writer. There is neither charisma nor challenge in his work to compel any discussion about its merits.

The real sadness comes with the waste of Gondry, one of the most brilliant directors I’ve seen in a long time. His best big screen outing was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and he’s done stellar work in music videos for the likes of Björk and The White Stripes. He has a distinctive style of highly effective low-tech special effects. If I didn’t see his name in the credits on this one, I would have sworn it was directed by a sedated film student. There are moments of Gondry’s trademark brilliance in a few scenes, mostly montages, but that isn’t enough to satisfy a fan like me.

That’s why this movie could easily have been whittled down to an hour. Rogen’s writing has a kind of loose flair that only egomaniacs think they can get away with. The truth is it feels barely literate. At the same time, there was no point to it being shown in 3D either. The whole exercise equals an evening fully wasted.