How far we’ve come?
It’s interesting to watch this after the years we’ve had of mostly fun, certainly next-level (up from this, at the very least) superhero movies. Having missed this when it came out, I can’t remember if it was generally enjoyed at the time – and watching it now, it’s hard to imagine it was.
Obviously time helps bear such things out, but this is dumb. I get that it’s trying to be fun, but it confuses lighthearted with moronic – and while Seth Rogen often plays characters who are perhaps slow, the world around those characters is smarter, and therein lies the comedy. Which makes it even more puzzling that this turned out the way it did, given that Rogen and his creative partner Evan Goldberg are the writers here.
The world of Green Hornet, and everybody in it, is dumb. The Green Hornet himself is an asshole, and of the particularly white, privileged, entitled and misogynistic variety; Kato (Jay Chou) is somehow even more problematic in this context than when Bruce Lee played him in the original; and the plot is… well, there’s no point devoting thought to that, coz clearly no-one involved in this did (what happened, dear Michel?).
… ok sure, that was catty – but a lack of intelligence in a movie insults mine as a viewer. Let’s add this to the growing list of “clever people making not-so-clever things“.
Further Viewing
The Weekly Planet boys express similar thoughts but funnier and with at least a few answers to that question, “What happened?“