Review of The Green Hornet (2011) by Baurushan J — 26 Nov 2013

For those of you who don't know, here's a history of the character The Green Hornet. It first came out as a radio drama in the 1930s-1950s, then as a comic book saga in the 1940s and then as a live action TV show in 1966 starring Van Williams as the title character and Bruce Lee as Kato and finally several scenes of that TV show were compressed into a feature film of 1 hour-23 minutes in 1974.

So when I heard that there was a blockbuster adaptation coming out, I was naturally hyped and then I was dumbed down. Let's just get the story out of the way so that I can bitchslap the fuck out of this movie.

The story is about Britt Reid played by Seth Rogen whose father James Reid played by Tom Wilkinson works for the Daily Sentinel. When his father dies, Britt is introduced to Kato played by Jay Chou who once worked for his father.

From that moment on, they suit up and pose as villains in order to get to the real villains and the rest is just an unnecessary joke one after the other. Now Let's tear this movie down! First of all, Britt Reid/Green Hornet was an awesome character and Kato was dare I say it, even more awesome because come on, he's played by Bruce fucking Lee! In this movie however, turning Britt Reid into a fool/douchebag/dimwit and Kato into a hard-working fag has to be the stupidest thing ever because all Britt does is get laid while Kato does all the hard work for him! Secondly the fact that this whole movie was supposed to be a comedy ruins everything.

We were supposed to take this seriously, not go into a comedic mess I mean what were Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg thinking when they wrote the script? A similar movie did this which was Men In Black but that movie worked because it had smart witty dialogues.

This film has immature gags you'd see in a typical comedy and trashes it onto a classic comic book saga. Now about the casting. Seth Rogen wasn't a bad choice for the title character but again, turning him into the lowest common denominator is comic book bullshit.

If you can't adapt the characters right, don't adapt the whatever into a movie in general. You can tell that Jay Chou is really trying to make his character work as Kato but, oh what did they do to this character? He is introduced as his coffee maker! I understand you were later going to introduce him as his weapons specialist but make that his introduction.

Come on, why the coffee maker? Bruce Lee, the man who did pure brutal martial arts his entire life spent his time playing this character in the TV series and his turning in his grave right now just for this.

But there's more. Britt and Kato have a fight causing Kato to fall in the swimming pool and Britt saves him because he can't swim. Are you going to tell me that Kato, the martial arts sidekick and weapons specialist.

..can't swim? THIS IS A FUCKING DISGRACE TO BRUCE LEE! And the fact that the character Van Williams once played is treated like a fool pisses me off even MORE! Cameron Diaz as Lenore Case was there for no reason other than to create conflict between Britt and Kato whereas in the original TV show, she was a useful secretary working for Britt.

Christoph Waltz as Chudnofsky is a complete fucking joke, Tom Wilkinson as Britt's dad was just there to die and get an emotional response out of the audience and we get two separate cameos from James Franco aka Harry Osborn and Edward Furlong aka John Connor.

Overall as a comedy, it succeeds but as a 3D action-blockbuster hit it was trying to promise us, it fails on every single level. The Green Hornet (2011) gets a 3.9/10.