So I saw Green Hornet (some spoilers)
In general, I enjoyed it. I've never seen the original show, but the movie kind of made me want to check it out, so that's a plus.
The jokes generally made me laugh and the action was gratuitously violent in a silly manner, and that's good. It kind of veered toward "so stupid that it's awesome" for me. My mom, who did like the show, actually loved it.
There were a few parts that bothered me though.
1. Cameron Diaz. I feel incredibly hypocritical saying this, because I totally gripe about Hollywood casting women far too young to play characters like Carol Ferris (she's supposed to be the same age as Hal!) or Lois Lane. But I thought Cameron Diaz seemed too old for the role she was supposed to be playing. And really, I've never understood the attraction anyway.
2. Britt Reid. This is not a complaint about Seth Rogen's acting, or even his suitability as an action lead. I was fine with that, surprisingly. My problem is that, in the end, I never really understood what he brought to the table.
I mean, Kato and Lenore basically do everything, and his moments of redemption (the sushi drive plan, the channeling Kato martial arts bit toward the end, and that one idea for the car) didn't really accomplish anything. I mean, I suppose we're supposed to understand his importance when we see poor Kato with his resume, but really, all I thought was "Come on, you can do it under your own initiative!"
In the end, I'd much rather see Kato being awesome and figuring out he can be awesome on his own.
And the bond of friendship, which usually balances when you have an unequal partnership with one vastly more competent than the other, didn't really work for me either. They spend too much time resenting each other for me to see what really makes the partnership work. Aside from Seth Rogen enthusiastically babbling double entendres.
But in the end, I did enjoy the movie. Especially the bad guy. Chudnufsky was awesome! Best part of the whole darn thing!
The jokes generally made me laugh and the action was gratuitously violent in a silly manner, and that's good. It kind of veered toward "so stupid that it's awesome" for me. My mom, who did like the show, actually loved it.
There were a few parts that bothered me though.
1. Cameron Diaz. I feel incredibly hypocritical saying this, because I totally gripe about Hollywood casting women far too young to play characters like Carol Ferris (she's supposed to be the same age as Hal!) or Lois Lane. But I thought Cameron Diaz seemed too old for the role she was supposed to be playing. And really, I've never understood the attraction anyway.
2. Britt Reid. This is not a complaint about Seth Rogen's acting, or even his suitability as an action lead. I was fine with that, surprisingly. My problem is that, in the end, I never really understood what he brought to the table.
I mean, Kato and Lenore basically do everything, and his moments of redemption (the sushi drive plan, the channeling Kato martial arts bit toward the end, and that one idea for the car) didn't really accomplish anything. I mean, I suppose we're supposed to understand his importance when we see poor Kato with his resume, but really, all I thought was "Come on, you can do it under your own initiative!"
In the end, I'd much rather see Kato being awesome and figuring out he can be awesome on his own.
And the bond of friendship, which usually balances when you have an unequal partnership with one vastly more competent than the other, didn't really work for me either. They spend too much time resenting each other for me to see what really makes the partnership work. Aside from Seth Rogen enthusiastically babbling double entendres.
But in the end, I did enjoy the movie. Especially the bad guy. Chudnufsky was awesome! Best part of the whole darn thing!
posted by kalinara @ 10:19 PM
6 Comments:
At January 23, 2011 1:47 AM,
Diabolu Frank said…
1) I dug Cameron Diaz precisely because they addressed the age issue hilariously and she was the Pepper Potts brains of the operation. I trust her as a reporter/criminologist in this type of movie.
2) Money, resources and motivation. The project is his baby, and it's fed by his paper. Kato could do it on his own, but it doesn't make sense, because his motivation is actually more hedonistic than Britt's. Reid is the altruist and the patron, so why rock the boat if you're not an attention whore (not that Kato isn't prideful.) Again, I loved that every member of the team brought something to create a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.
At January 23, 2011 7:14 AM,
Eyz said…
I used to watch some reruns of the show during the 90s^^
It was silly but fun.
I prefered it over, say, Adam West's Batman.
Can't wait to check it out...
Which will be much later on, I checked my local theatre and the price was around 30 bucks...why no 2D version?!?
At January 23, 2011 9:03 AM,
kalinara said…
Diabolu:
1) They did address it hilariously. (No way in hell do I buy her as 36 though. Just sayin'.) I think possibly it's just that I don't care for Diaz's acting. If another actress of similar age was involved, I might have liked it more.
2) I got that in theory, but altruism without a dash of competence isn't enough for me. I think if, perhaps, he was able to more clearly be successful at the end (ideally, the sushi drive ploy, since that's something that legitimately Kato didn't think to do and wouldn't have thought to do.) The sushi thing just seemed pointless to me. The end could have gone exactly the same way with the ploy having worked (with the drive destroyed somehow).
But altruism alone isn't any good, IMO, when all it results in is more danger which always ends up with someone else getting you out.
Eyz:
I'll have to give it a try.
At January 23, 2011 12:45 PM,
SallyP said…
I really do need to break down and actually go out and see this movie.
I DID used to watch the television show, and I remember loving it. I've always thought that the actor who played Britt would have made a wonderful Hal Jordan, so there is that. But it was fun. I still think that the car was one of the best features.
At January 23, 2011 12:47 PM,
D said…
Waltz was good, but I think I would have prefered it he played Reid.
Diaz was...ok, but Rogen? Wow, after about 10 minutes I was tempted to leave. A little of him goes a long way.
At January 23, 2011 10:06 PM,
Your Obedient Serpent said…
I still haven't seen the movie.
Even though I'm the right age, I never saw the original show until , when SyFy ran a marathon; alas, in 1968, my parents controlled the television.
(I almost said that they controlled the remote, and then had a sudden attack of Future Shock remembering the days when we actually had to get up to change the channel instead of rummaging through the couch cushions.)
I really quite liked the show, and it gave me a new respect for William Dozier: it wasn't camp at all (at least no more than anything else made in 1968). Both of Dozier's late-'60s masked crime fighter shows were faithful to the then-current source material: Batman was a colorful, over-the-top romp full of over-the-top adversaries and absurd situations, just like the comics of the day, while The Green Hornet was a straight thirty-minute crime drama that just happened to feature a masked pair of protagonists, just like the old radio show.
Too bad the new movie decided to camp it up. I'll probably wait for DVD, if I bother to see it at all. It's not that I'm distressed over disrespect being done to a beloved childhood memory; it's that I just don't have much interest in camp, especially camped-up versions of source material that played it straight.
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