BEFORE: OK, preachy part of the blog over, back to fictional superheroes.
THE PLOT: Britt Reid, heir to his father's large company, teams up with his late dad's assistant Kato to become a masked crime fighting team.
AFTER: What's funny about the development of superheroes in the 20th century is that the first few were positioned as perfect idols. Superman, who could change the course of mighty rivers, able to leap tall buildings, more powerful than a locomotive, etc. etc. Batman - he's a billionaire, genius with computers and gadgets, master of every fighting style in the world. Guys wanna be him, and gals wanna get with him. This worked for a few decades, but at some point comic books lost some cred because the heroes were just a bit TOO perfect.
Enter the development of the nebbishy Clark Kent - Superman pretending to be a nerd so he can hide in plain sight. Then along came Spider-Man, a complete loser in his Peter Parker identity, with more personal problems than you, BUT he gets to be Spider-Man. The Marvel heroes of the 1970's and 80's were far from perfect, Tony Stark was an alcoholic, Thor was an arrogant god who needed to learn humility, even Captain America wasn't perfect, since he still had the morals of a man from the 1940's, and was out of touch with current politics. They each had some kind of personality flaw, which seemed to give them more believability in the long run.
Carry the trend even further, and you end up with heroes like Wolverine (animal-like rages), Deadpool (split personality, suicidal tendencies), the modern Hulk (split personality AND rage). Even the modern Batman is now pitched as something of a psychological mess. And the Watchmen were all kinds of messed up -
Which brings me to the re-imagining of the Green Hornet. They did something very clever here, and they split the positive attributes among two less-than-perfect people. One is the entitled rich kid who has the resources and desire to get out and fight injustice, and the other has the fighting ability and the technical wizardry to make it happen. The term "sidekick" seems to have fallen out of favor and "partner" seems more appropriate here, but for anyone who knows the old TV show, Green Hornet is still the star.
Well, OK, really the car (Black Beauty) is the star here, at least as far as the action sequences are concerned. There's a lot of gadgetry involved here, but that's also part of the fun. A more cynical person might point out that whatever gadget is needed was conveniently installed in the car just yesterday, but I digress.
I thought there was some really good stuff here, but it's a little lame to depict heroes who don't know exactly what they're doing, so they have to ask for advice and help to plan their next moves. How can they know they want to be heroes if they don't know exactly what that entails? OK, so they're playing it by ear, but then how did they know which equipment they were going to need?
I could get all nitpicky about the action sequences, but the Mythbusters have already debunked the two biggest ones, so that's a lot of work I don't have to do here. Still, it's a fun ride mostly, if you can ignore Seth Rogen getting way too, um, Seth Rogen-y at times.
NITPICK POINT: When Britt and Kato were disagreeing and fighting each other all over the mansion, it was too reminiscent of the old Pink Panther movies, where Inspector Clouseau would be attacked by his man-servant (with a very similar name, Cato).
NITPICK POINT #2: A turntable? In a car? I get that you want to rock things old-school, but how would that work? Wouldn't the record just skip constantly?
NITPICK POINT #3: These days, I doubt that many newspaper offices would have their printing presses in the same building as their editorial offices.
Starring Seth Rogen (last seen in "Fanboys"), Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz (last heard in "Shrek Forever After"), Christoph Waltz (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "The Ghost and the Darkness"), Edward James Olmos (last seen in "Stand and Deliver"), with cameos from James Franco (last seen in "Knocked Up"), Edward Furlong (last seen in "Before and After").
RATING: 7 out of 10 cappuccinos
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