“You said I'm boring. My gun has two barrels. That's not boring.”
From the Better Than I Thought It Would Be Files comes the Seth Rogen/Michel Gondry adaptation of pulp hero The Green Hornet. Rogen (who co-wrote the script with Evan Goldberg) stars as Britt Reid, a spoiled newspaper heir whose father (Tom Wilkinson) dies of an allergic reaction to a bee sting. While defacing his father’s gravesite, Reid and Kato (Jay Chou) – his father’s mechanic and assistant – break up a mugging and get mistaken as criminals by the cops. Reid convinces Kato that the two should use the newspaper to beef up the criminal profile of “The Green Hornet” while actually fighting crime and bringing Russian mobster Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz) to justice. Along for the ride are a pre-STRANGER THINGS David Harbour, Edward James Olmos and Cameron Diaz as the older but wiser assistant who helps Reid and Kato in their exploits. Like other failed pulp adaptations – Alec Baldwin’s THE SHADOW (1994) and Billy Zane’s THE PHANTOM (1996) – it’s both fun and exhausting, ping-ponging between action, comedy and bromance without ever finding its footing. Chou is great as the resourceful sidekick while Rogen is tolerable if woefully miscast as the hero. Unfortunately, a bloated budget and needless 3-D effects (remember that era?) sabotaged plans for a sequel though talks of an unrelated reboot surface on occasion. Via HBO Max. GRADE: C+. – Dan Taylor
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