Green Hornet )spoilers(

Saw the movie tonight. Seth Rogen as heir to a newspaper who decides to fight crime with his friend Kato who is a super fighter and engineer.

Took a little while to get going, but I enjoyed it.

The action stuff was all great. The humor was good, if you like Seth Rogen. Actually the whole movie pretty much boils down to Seth Rogen. If you like him, you will like the film. If you don’t like him, you won’t like this film unless you try really hard to ignore his parts and only watch Kato.

I especially liked the relationship between Brit and Kato. Kato is super talented, but his talents are pretty much wasted until Brit gives him direction. This initially ignites a big bromance until their egos get bruised. Both their bromance and their spat were well done.

Then there’s the whole Kato-vision thing. Which is basically what we see happen on Pysch when Sean Spencer notices clues, except here they paint the things red, and instead of clues they are tactical things. Which is cool but not novel. The more interesting thing they do though is sort of replicate objects that people are getting knocked over so it seems like they are going farther. Best describe perhaps as a visual echo. It’s a neat effect, and one I haven’t seen before.

Bottom line: Seth Rogen does Green Hornet, and awesome Taiwan pop star does Kato. Gondry directs. Cameron Diaz is the female lead. The Jew hunter from Inglorious Basterds is the villain. The Black Beauty is on steroids. That says pretty much says everything good and bad about this film.

Seth Rogen was pretty grating. Michel Gondry was pretty great.

Thanks for the review** jackdavinci**. While it isn’t a surprise, I do appreciate the warning.

I’m pretty easy to please with these comic book movies. I have hatred for hardly any of them, even the ones most people find notoriously bad like Daredevil. But Rogen is annoying and I can safely say that this is a good one to skip.

I saw it too, and pretty much agree with your review completely, jackdavinci. I like Rogen, and I thought the movie was hilarious. I really enjoyed it, thought the buddy movie/bromance vibe between Brit and Kato struck the right tone given the Green Hornet story. The action scenes were really well done, and while I usually get sort of bored during extended acton scenes or car chase scenes, Gondry did a really great job with some of the effects and that helped keep it interesting. The fights also often had just enough of a slapstick element that the movie, which is at heart a comedy), didn’t suffer too big a shift in tone.

Also, just when you thought every idea for a car chase had been done, well, they came up with a couple new ones.

This thing is getting pretty bad reviews, but I loved it.

We just got back and it got 4 thumbs up from this family of 4. We all enjoyed it, it never treated itself too seriously and despite some slow parts it worked overall.

Also the Black Beauty was pretty awesome.

It was fun seeing the movie around the stunts Mythbusters tested.

Probably gonna wait for DVD, but out of curiosity… On radio and in comics Brit Reed is related to Dan(?) Reed who was the Lone Ranger. Is this mentioned at all.

No.

It’s not mentioned, but in Britt’s bedroom there was a Lone Ranger poster, I guess as something for the fans to notice. There was also a sketchbook that Kato had of drawings of ideas for gadgets and stuff for the car, and there was also one page of sketches of Bruce Lee.

Enjoyed this as well. Also really liked the villian - kind of unusual for a man that powerful to have such a powerful inferiority complex. Kind of had a sad sack vibe to him.

Darn, I just heard a review on “Le Masque et la Plume” which is a very prestigious radio review of movies (in France). Wow, 's been a long time since I heard that many good critics on a movie they review. Might be the Michel Gondry effect, as they say here, “he’s got the Card.”

I disagree with this characterization. Kato is a martial arts phenom and technological genius plus hottie. Sure, prior to his bosses’ death, he was just one of the help. But I wouldn’t say his talents were wasted. He had pretty much free reign to come up with any invention he wanted, seemingly carte blanche. So I find it hard to believe his talents would’ve gone undiscovered had Brit not intervened.

Him being made to play side-kick to a juvenile, bumbling Homer Simpsonesque chauvinist like Brit was a joke, and intentionally so, of course. But the joke should’ve been funny; yet to me, it fell flat. I never bought into Brit being someone who should be telling Kato what to do, not even a little bit, and his insistence on putting Kato in his place throughout the movie made him hard to like. His behavior towards Linore (sp?)was also the opposite of endearing. I cringed throughout every scene they were together. Brit would have been more acceptable as a super hero had his personality came off more like a cute but dumb Tommy Boy type rather than a jerkishly stupid, power-tripping frat boy.

That both Kato (a racial minority) and Linore (a woman) were obviously more competent and intelligent than man-boy Brit–but were relegated to subservient positions–is just a more annoying regurgitation of the White Men are Stupid Bastards But Don’t We Just Love Them All Anyway? trope that has permeated commericals, TV shows, and movies for years now.

The movie was just okay, in my book.

I did like the villain, though. He was the best part of the movie.

The spoiler for me was the announcement that Seth Rogen was playing the lead. Who wants a superhero who looks like your plumber?

Or seems like a stoner? You’d be hard pressed to find too many super hero movies that I hated - hell, I even didn’t dislike Daredevil.

But I just can’t see myself sitting through Seth as Green Hornet.

I guess it is doing OK though - in two weeks it has earned back half of its production budget.

Just dropping in to say that I saw it and, as much a surprise to me as to anyone I know, I actually liked it. Rogen was, well, Rogen, but funny. I found myself laughing throughout the movie, and almost uncontrollably when Britt called Cato a dick.

Also, if you’ve seen one car chase, you’ve pretty much seen them all, but as was mentioned upthread, in this movie they weren’t bad at all, even the eye-rolling ones.

You could do worse with a super hero movie than the Green Hornet; Iron Man 2 for example, which I fell asleep on. The Green Hornet may have been a little silly at times, but it was definitely entertaining.

ETA: There was a funny moment when Cato drove up to some bad guys and Britt, too scared to confront them, told Cato to speak to them, and Cato said “But I can barely speak English!” :smiley: