THE GREEN HORNET

Rating: 3

THE GREEN HORNET is not a great film, but it does get one thing very right. It is filled with the exuberance that a kid finds in living through the exploits of his or her favorite super hero or heroine. For all the faults to be found with its pacing, there is something enormously refreshing in a flick that just wants to have a good time and does so with a lack of mean-spiritedness. Co-star and co-writer Seth Rogan has taken the mythos of the eponymous do-gooder and made it his own with a slacker vibe and a doughy physique. That his film is also a little doughy is a shame.
This Hornet, aka Brit Reid, is not so much out for justice as the film begins, as he is desperate for the return of that perfect cappuccino with which is accustomed to start his day. Never mind that the day starts sometime post meridian, and that it is filled with all manner of decadence and time-wasting. Heir to a newspaper fortune, and a newspaper, Reid has many issues, mostly with his father (Tom Wilkinson), and no constructive way to work them out. When his father is inconveniently dies after yet another stern lecture to his son about his unfortunate life choices, Reid discovers that there were many things about the old man he never suspected. Mainly that it was Kato (singing sensation Jay Chou, who also contributes to the soundtrack) the mechanic he fired the day after Dad‘s death in a fit of pique, who was making that cappuccino every morning before tending to the elder Reid’s fleet of pricey and off-limits automobiles.
There’s more to Kato than changing points and plugs, though, as Reid learns when he conscripts him on a mission of vandalism that turns into a good deed when they rescue an attractive couple from a gang of miscreants. For the first time in his life, Reid has a direction and a purpose, though fighting crime is not something for which he is prepared. The same can be said of running a newspaper. Fortunately, he has Kato, the mechanical genius and martial arts master to build the Black Beauty sedan, trick it out with armaments, and otherwise keep Reid in one piece. He also has a grizzled newspaper veteran (Edward James Olmos), and the toothsome Lenore Casey (Cameron Diaz), holder of a degree in journalism with a minor in criminology, working as his secretary to keep things at the paper running smoothly. She also wears a cleverly cut sheath dress with a sense of panache that is devastating.
It’s all very stream-of-consciousness, with little regard for the squads of police crashing into all manner of barriers after running afoul of the Black Beauty, or the public transportation vehicles demolished in the same manner, or the innocent bystanders and what must surely be grievous bodily harm visited upon them in the same process. This isn’t about them even if the mayhem does give one pause. It’s about the unlikely bonding of scion without a cause and the orphaned Chinese immigrant who, by all rights, should probably be running the world. Most of it is funny, with a peculiar yet piquant homoerotic undercurrent from Reid. Some of it, as when Reid and Kato finally come to blows when Lenore favors Kato for off-duty amusement, drags on much too long, a situation that sprightly camera tricks from Michel Gondry does nothing to ameliorate. Rogan is a koala of cuteness, and he gives Reid an unexpectedly grounded sense of his own ineptitude despite the power of the press and the bankbook. The balanced tension of that keeps the running gag of Kato, infused with Chou’s slick sense of self-confident cool, saving him every time he steps out of his house going. As does the plot that has Case inadvertently giving pointers to Reid and Kato about how to jump-star their careers as crime-fighters masquerading as villains.
For the actual villain, there is Cristophe Waltz as a sartorially sensitive kingpin with an ungainly name and an unusual form of introspection. While not as charismatically malignant as his Oscar™-winning role in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, he has a subtle whimsy to his viciousness.
When THE GREEN HORNET works, which is more than half of the time of the time, it’s a cheerful little romp that refuses to take itself seriously. The cameo by James Franco as a hipster aspiring kingpin is worth the price of admission alone, as he squares of with frenetic ebullience against Waltz’s blasé sangfroid in a bi-polar battle of egos. That’s the deal here. Characters and situations drawn with broad, sometimes messy, strokes, that may stumble, but never lose their energy and overwhelming sense of playfulness.