Seth Rogen apparently slimmed down for his role of Brett Reid, aka The Green Hornet, but he needn't have bothered. He still carries himself like a tubby schlubby. And I'm always imagining an ever-present cloud of pot smoke surrounding him, like Pigpen's cloud of dirt on Peanuts. Hardly the Nietzschean ideal, in either case.
Based on a 1930s radio serial, then adapted as a single-season TV show in the mid-1960s to cash-in on the campy Batman craze (and mostly notable for its casting of Bruce Lee as Kato), The Green Hornet is one of those long-languishing superhero properties that has been in perpetual turnaround for the last 20 years. For some reason, it was this version that finally get made -- with a script by Rogen and his writing partner Evan Goldberg, with whom he also wrote the somewhat violent stoner caper The Pineapple Express and the comedy Superbad. For the director, they hired Michael Gondry, best known for directing Charlie Kaufman's wonderful script of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Not exactly franchise-y superhero resumes from any corner of the project.
If I gave a shit about the character of the Green Hornet, I might be troubled by this weird melange. But as someone who finds the tedium of the modern superhero movie to be greatly improved by humor, I was mildly entertained by the goofiness of The Green Hornet. I had no expectations of plot coherence, and it's a good thing -- really, a Los Angeles where a newspaper is widely read and influential, and where all manner of ethnic crime cartels are all controlled by the erudite Nazi from Inglorious Basterds? That's crazy talk! (Not seeing it in 3D also improved my mood.)
Brett Reid, a slacker scion of the fictional paper of record, is living a life of babyman ease in his father's poolhouse, which is larger than my apartment building. His father dies, and Brett assumes the mantle of adulthood, aided by his father's mechanic, Kato, whom Brett keeps on the payroll because he can make a mean cappuccino. (If this doesn't signify the 0.5% of the population that controls the wealth of this country in 2011, I don't know what does.) He and Kato bicker amusingly, the main joke being that Brett is an inept Seth Rogen character and Kato knows martial arts and is a mechanic (and barrista). The beard, Cameron Diaz, shows up to make sure we don't think things are getting too gay.
There are driving things with their fixed-up car, some kung fu fighting, a Gangster's Paradise duet, and it all slides by evenly enough. Hey, it's January and there's not a whole lot of other commercially-hyped product in the marketplace (Season of the Witch, anyone?). At the very least, you won't hate yourself when you watch it on cable in a year.
"The beard, Cameron Diaz, shows up to make sure we don't think things are getting too gay."
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