My Month at the Movies: January 2011, Part 2

In the midst of a busy weekend and before Snowmageddon 2011 begins, I did manage to sneak in one more film for the month of January, keeping my moviegoing streak alive at five weeks in a row. How unfortunate that said movie was...

The Green Hornet. This was one of those projects that had been "in development" for ages--in the past, George Clooney had been attached to star and Kevin Smith to write/direct--but it took Seth Rogan, star of comedies such as Knocked Up and Zack and Miri Make a Porno, to push it into existence as executive producer/co-writer/star as Britt Reid, crusading newspaper publisher who moonlights as the title vigilante with the help of mechanical genius/coffee maker Kato (Jay Chou).

Was it worth the wait? Not really.

Director Michel Gondry stages the action sequences nicely, and the film boasts a strong supporting cast (Tom Wilkinson as Britt's dad, Edward James Olmos as the dad's best friend, Cameron Diaz as the potential love interest, Christoph Waltz as the main bad guy).

Unfortunately, the only fully developed character is Britt himself, and he turns out to be the kind of obnoxious, loutish, insufferable jerkwad you wouldn't want to spend five minutes, much less a two-hour movie. Even after his father dies and Britt takes to the streets to beat the crap out of L.A. criminal scum, he remains an unrepentant, spoiled asshole, talking down to everyone from Kato to Lenore (Diaz) and babbling non sequiturs nearly nonstop.

(Much of Rogan's yammering sounds improvised. If that's the case, the director should have reined him in. If it was actually scripted like that, the screenwriter should have been fired on the spot...oh, wait...Rogan co-wrote the screenplay, didn't he? Never mind.)

Fortunately, I saw The Green Hornet in 2D, rather than the much-more-expensive 3D. My headache afterward would have been so much worse.

Also? The Green Hornet, which features numerous acts of violence (beatings, shootings, stabbings, crushings, etc.) is rated PG-13 by the MPAA, while The King's Speech, which no beatings, shootings, stabbings, crushings or anything untoward except a few expletives from the mouth of Colin Firth, is rated R by the same board. Ratings fail, MPAA.