The Green Hornet: The Good, The Bad, The WTF

Melissa Bradley of Melissa's Imaginarium brings you todays guest post with a review of the Green Hornet movie 2011.

Plot Summery: Following the death of his father, Britt Reid, heir to his father's large company, teams up with his late dad's assistant Kato to become a masked crime fighting team.



Director: Michel Gondry
Writers: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg
Stars: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz and Cameron Diaz




Let me start off by saying that in my childhood pantheon of superheroes, the Green Hornet did not exist. I can hear the groans and moans now. “Melissa, you Philistine, you uncouth ignoramus, how can you not know about the Green Hornet and his faithful sidekick, Kato? It was only Bruce Lee’s defining moment on television…” And blah, blah, blah…So with no preconceived notions of what or who Green Hornet was supposed to be, I headed off to the theater with my own faithful sidekick, aka my nephew. I admit I was not entirely sure what sort of spectacle I was about to witness. However, given the fact that it was a superhero flick written by and starring one loveable loser, Seth Rogan, did not set the bar too high. Limbo for Hobbits, anyone?


The Story...

Our hero, Britt Reid (Rogen), is the unhappy playboy son of a media mogul with severe daddy issues. Right off the bat it was WTF. Seth Rogan is not the first or even the fiftieth guy that comes to mind when I think of playboy. To show us his dashing slacker rebelliousness, Britt appears onscreen wearing a white Saturday Night Fever special carrying a bottle of bubbly. He dances around like Bluto from Animal House with a lot less verve and swagger with all these vampettes hanging on his every awkward grind. He takes a one of the blow up dolls home and in what is the strangest get-your-freak-on scenes ever filmed, they go into Daddy’s garage. Cuz, yeah, when there’s a mansion with a jillion bedrooms, the first place I want to bang is in the garage. To keep things PG, Britt and his babe dujour move from car to car, kissing in frantic fast forward like a team of builders from one of those reality shows.

The next morning, poor Britt gets the typical you’re-pathetic-when-are-you-going-to-grow-up lecture from Dear Old Dad. James Reid is played by the estimable Tom Wilkinson in a wasted phoned-in performance. Britt’s response to Big Daddy’s disapproval is to go out and have some more fun. His self-centered universe comes crashing down hard when BD dies, leaving Britt in charge for the first time in his life. Awww, party’s over. In a fit of token despair, our hero fires the entire staff except his own maid and Kato, his father’s mechanic, because hey, the guy makes awesome coffee.

I’m calling a time out here for a real rant. Kato is my biggest WTF of this whole movie, indeed the whole mythos of Green Hornet. I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, I drank the kool-aid on sparkling vampires. But a super-intelligent mechanics whiz with fighting skills that would make a ninja jealous working as a glorified house boy? Un-effing-believable. This is 2011 and Kato should have at least been reinvented into something like the editor of the paper or even a fellow Richie Rich. Okay, stepping off the soapbox.

After being saved from unemployment by his bean roasting skills, Kato is encouraged by Britt to “tell me your story.” In one of the many Rube Goldbergesque twists in this movie, Kato and Britt get drunk, decide Papa was a dick and inexplicably drive to the cemetery to cut the head off the big statue to Daddy Dearest. They foil a mugging and get chased by the cops, who still have not learned how to pursuit drive. Apparently defensive driving skills are not a requirement of the police academy. From this mess, Britt decides that he and Kato should fight crime, but they need to blend and make the cops think they’re really criminals so that innocents won’t be harmed. Got that? I didn’t, but hell I’d already watched 40 minutes and my nephew was having fun.

Enter the gorgeous Cameron Diaz as Lenore Chase, a secretary from the secretarial pool. It’s Mad Men super-hero style. She immediately gets hired and put on hero support. She gets to do the research and make sure the Green Hornet gets his appropriate headlines. My feminist instincts nearly went through the screen in a fit of blind rage. Are you effing kidding me?

Apparently, both Britt and Kato would like to bang L and this provides all sorts of murky tension between the two and breaks the Fellowship. Funny, I would have thought it would have been all the a-hole moments where Britt kept ordering Kato around and accusing the guy of trying to hog the Green Hornet’s spotlight, but that’s just me. Kato and Britt have this huge knock-down drag out fight that provides yet another WTF moment. In what universe could a schlub like Britt get in any punches on a fighter of Kato’s skill? Apparently this one.

Okay so now that we’ve got the big bad hero and his team in place, let me get to the villain of the piece, Russian mobster Benjamin Chudnofsky. Christoph Waltz delivers a stylized, over-the-top performance as this cheestastic supervillain striving to take over the L.A. underworld. His two things are to have absolute control and be an evil fashionista. The Green Hornet is the obstacle to the first, his bad taste the obstacle to the second. Sessions with Dr. Phil and Tyra Banks are in order.

In a cliché moment worthy of a made-for-tv-movie, Britt discovers that Big Daddy was covering up for the local DA who it turns out is in bed with Chudnofsy. Angered, our hero’s plan is to capture the Big Cheese and set things right. Things get even more convoluted from here, descending into a mad whirl of wild car chases, shootouts and tech gadgets from Kato’s toy box. It culminates in one of the most preposterous climactic moments I have ever witnessed on screen.


The 411...

This movie was a disturbing mess with more plot holes than bullet holes. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the offensive, unbelievable characters, the lame dialogue and the crazy production design that couldn’t decide whether it was 2011 or 1967. This superhero flick is right up there with Clooney’s Batman and Robin. Save your money and watch this at home with some alcohol. It may actually work with beer goggles or a tequila haze.

This review was written by Melissa Bradley, Editor and Chief of Melissa's Imaginarium

Have you seen the movie and what did you think? Leave your comments below!