Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Superheroes have always come burdened with a subtext of emotional baggage - Batman is a closet sociopath, Superman always struggled with orphan issues, Spider-Man with the responsibility of his uncle’s death, the X-Men with the burden of being different. Over the years in both print and screen renditions, our superheroes have become more and more enmeshed with these emotional trappings. In short: superheroes have become beached on the shores of seriousness. No longer can we just watch a flying man punch a bad guy through a wall while carrying a damsel in distress over his shoulder, oh no, we must experience the insecurities and sentimental distresses that accompany it. Superhero films have found themselves similarly held back, the spirit of fun once associated with people who could shoot lasers from their eyes, replaced with the a dark and gloomy affectation. Even Iron Man, so drunken and silly in its first incarnation, deluded its second entry with papa-issues and booze. Thus, let us raise a glass of bubbly to the wee Frenchmen Michel Gondry and the novel idea he has brought to his adaptation of The Green Hornet - he’s made it fun again.

Review - Green Hornet

It isn’t as if The Green Hornet doesn’t have the sort of weighty origins (parent killed, errant mantle of justice placed on rebellious son’s shoulders) which lend themselves to heavier takes on superhero characters, it’s just that Michel Gondry doesn’t seem to care about them. From moment one of The Green Hornet we know two things: one James Reid (Tom Wilkinson) is an asshole more intent on bringing justice to the world than loving his son, and two, Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) is a rebellious kid who doesn’t do well with authority. When Papa Reid bites the bullet under mysterious circumstances, drunk party-boy Reid, with the help of the newly discovered Kato (Jay Chou), decides to invoke a little justice of his own. The difference here though is Kato and Reid are assholes, out for “justice” to satisfy their own dislike of their new-dead father figure. Their first "mission" is the cutting off of the head of the James Reid Memorial statue. These are not your average superheroes.

Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen have made names for themselves as screenwriters who can impressively create a stunted man-boy of a character and Britt Reid is no different. He’s a self-aggrandizing asshole who only ventures in to the vigilante business to build his own ego and deal with the scolding lack of approval his father left him with. Rogen plays him as such, a sort of cocksure Inspector Gadget, with the super-intelligent, super-talented Kato his Penny and Brain. Their banter and interaction is the core of the movie, and Gondry allows for it to be a silly romp, the highlight being a delightfully long dust-up inside of Britt’s pool-house headquarters.

Bringing Gondry in to the mix was a brilliant turn, as his take on the superhero is much like his take on dreams, silly and inventive, immersed in a sort of whimsical love for the idea of dressing up and fighting crime. The Kato-vision, the general wink-wink atmosphere of the film, the almost James Bond-like inventions, the entire persona of Christoph Waltz’s Chudnofsky - Even with the berating presence of Rogen’s Reid, Gondry makes the concept of being a superhero entertaining again. And in typical Gondry fashion, the plot and the scripting bounce from one extreme to the other, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter. I found myself gleefully engaged with The Green Hornet in a childlike way I just can’t with today's heavy-shouldered superheroes.


A note: I was entirely bummed when I realized that my screening for The Green Hornet was not only in 3-D, but post converted 3-D. Bring on the dimly lit screens and poor production values. But alas, The Green Hornet is not only the best 3-D conversion so far, but possibly the best 3-D I’ve seen. The image was crisp and colorful and at times I forgot entirely I was wearing those clunky hipster shades.

- Noah Sanders -



Unless otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by John Laird under a Creative Commons License.