The Green Hornet

My problems with The Green Hornet can be pretty well summed up by how I felt Seth Rogen's screen persona worked with the movie and against it. For the first half of the movie, it works well, because Britt Reid starts out as a spoiled rich kid - lazy and immature and occasionally callous, traits Seth Rogen plays well because he's admirably unafraid to appear unsympathetic onscreen (probably my favorite aspect of his screen persona).  He also gives the character some nice notes of humor and vulnerability, and flashes of an almost childlike enthusiasm.  All of these aspects come together most successfully in Britt's scenes with Kato, the mechanic on his father's estate who later becomes his partner in crime-fighting.  In those early scenes, Seth Rogen captures the joy of a little kid discovering a new friend, one who turns out to be super awesome at lots of things and has access to amazing toys

I liked Jay Chou's performance as Kato, even though there were times where I found his dialogue difficult to understand.  But in some ways this worked for me; his reserve and inscrutability balanced nicely against Seth Rogen's more open performance, and the times when Kato did express himself forcefully seemed to have a greater weight because of how quietly earlier scenes had been played.  I felt that Chou gave Kato an air of loneliness that made his willingness to connect with Britt Reid convincing. 

The  movie works best in these early scenes, when Britt and Kato are first getting to know each other and begin their accidental foray into crime-fighting.  In the first half, the movie operates as a comedy riffing on superhero movies, taking scenes and moments we've seen before and undercutting them in clever but not mean-spirited ways.  The movie seems to know that the audience has seen and loved this type of movie before, and is ready for something different.  It's fun at the beginning when Britt and Kato stumble through crime-fighting, asking their administrative assistant what the next move of the Green Hornet will likely be because they don't know it themselves, and celebrate the joy of having discovered a purpose for their lives.

The movie falls apart when it starts to take things seriously and transition into being an actual superhero movie rather than a comedic commentary on one.  Part of the problem is Seth Rogen, who's never able to transition out of his typical persona into true Hero Mode.  There's a clear moment where we're supposed to believe that His Character Gets It, but the epiphany is set up badly and lacks the kind of emotional punch necessary to make the change believable.  The events in the movie surrounding this change - a falling out with Kato, realizing the costs of his behavior to innocent people, etc - feel like obligatory plot points more than organic storytelling, and so you never get that cathartic "Aha!" moment that's supposed to come when a movie's hero discovers and decides to take his true path.
Another problem is the movie's pacing, which drags near the end so badly that I wanted the movie to end ten minutes before it actually did.  I also felt that the villain reflected the movie's jumbled tone, in that he alternated between being menacing and being cartoonish, and as a result didn't really work well at either. 

The Green Hornet ended up having enough laughs and interesting set pieces that I didn't regret spending the money to go see it, but also frustrated me a bit because I feel like there were enough good things there to make a great movie.  Michel Gondry has a few sequences where he gets to show off his artistry, but the movie lacks the kind of emotional punch and cohesiveness I'd expect from a director of his caliber - I wasn't surprised to read recently that he didn't have final cut of the movie and that he at times had to defer to Seth Rogen's take on the movie.  I can't help feeling that that was a mistake, even though one of the things Gondry didn't want in the movie but had to film because Rogen wanted it (Britt and Kato singing in the car together) ended up being one of my favorite moments in the movie. All in all: a mixed bag.