The Green Hornet 2011 Reviewer: Ricardo Barberini Director: Michel Gondry Cast: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Tom Wilkinson, David Harbour, Edward James Olmos

This movie ranks with the “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” as one of the stupidest movies made, except, whereas those older movies were made on a shoe-string budget; this one cost tens of millions of dollars to produce.

Green Hornet is the story of a crime fighting newspaper publisher Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) who with the help of his butler come chauffeur Kato (Jay Chou) changes his identity and his appearance to fight criminals.

In this movie, a Russian Mafia type boss, Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz) is a comical psychotic vicious man who is trying to control the crime families of Los Angeles. 

Meanwhile, Britt Reid who is a rich playboy and has no interest in anything other than wine, women and a good time inherits his father's daily newspaper, The Daily Sentinel.

Britt hires Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) as his assistant and after witnessing a mugging decides to fight Chudnofsky and his syndicate by posing as a costumed criminal named Green Hornet.  As usual, there are gadgets, fight scenes, car chases, and special effects. However, there is hardly any suspense in this mindless movie.

The major difference between the Green Hornet and other schizophrenic super heroes such as the Superman, Ironman and Batman is that Green Hornet poses as a real criminal.  Other super heroes like Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman pose as good guys and are admired by the public and praised by the police.

The 1960's TV Series starring Van Williams as Britt Reid and Bruce Lee as Kato made Bruce Lee an international star. The pert Wende Wagner played Lenore Case. The Green Hornet was somewhat cartoonish but unlike the Batman series of the same era which was goofy and comical, Van and Bruce played the characters straight. Unfortunately, Bruce Lee died soon and Van Williams became an investor and retired from the movies as a wealthy man.

I do not know where Michel Gondry went to school to learn to become a director. Frankly, he is a failure. The acting by Seth Rogen, Jay Chou etc., stinks! These guys are trying to make it look camp but it comes out like eighth graders making a movie.  Even Cameron Diaz who is a talented actress comes across as a silly twerp of a character.  I would sincerely recommend that the two main actors return to their former jobs pumping gas somewhere in Hollywood or if that is not what they were doing before, seriously consider doing that.

We give this movie ½ star.  However, as of this writing in June 2011, the movie has already made nearly 300 million dollars worldwide, so what do I know?

1/2