“The Green Hornet” isn’t “Iron Man”

I hereby promise no spoilers follow.

To me the one thing a protagonist needs to be is somebody the audience can identify with. The audience absolutely has to be able to put themselves into the shoes of the protagonist and walk around in his dream world for a couple of hours.

I hate stupid protagonists.

I can forgive a lot of character flaws. The arrogance of Tony Stark in “Iron Man” I think is a good example. Frequently those flaws add depth to the character, however, as Ron White says, “you can’t fix stupid.”

I could have forgiven Seth Rogen for making Britt Reid a bit of a foolish frat boy that never grew up as long as it stayed in the first act or at the very worst the mid-point of the film, but to continue it all the way to the final frame is, to me, an unforgivable sin.

I don’t want to be stupid and if I am, I sure as hell don’t want to think I’m going to be stupid my entire life. I want to believe a positive change could take place.

“But, he wises up in the third act when he finally figure out what was going on,” you say.

No. He doesn’t. He’s simply puts two and two together on one particular item; even a blind squirrel finds an occasional nut. Nothing else about him has changed.

“What about ‘Forest Gump,’” you ask?

Forest Gump wasn’t stupid. He was a simple man with a lower than average IQ, but functioned as highly as he could under the circumstances. The same can not be said for Britt Reid. In fact, it seems that at almost every moment during the story he’s functioning well below what he’s capable of.

It’s ironic too because at one point in the film he’s pleading with Kato to join him and for Kato to live up to his full potential. I believe this is, in fact, the “theme stated” beat of the film (no matter where it actually fell in the page count), but sadly it also seems Seth Rogen himself didn’t heed that bit of advise in creating the character.

I think this could have been a great new franchise, but because this first film didn’t live up to its potential, I’m not so sure it will be.

Don’t get me wrong, the film isn’t a complete and utter waste of time, it’s just that it could have, should have, been so much better.

Jay Chao makes a nice Kato with a lot of respect for, but without doing a hack imitation of, Bruce Lee.

Cameron Diaz is a nice, if not a bit too old to play, Lenore Case. One note on that: I’d have to refer back to the screenplay, but Young Britt in the very first shots of the film couldn’t be more than 13. After that we jump, “20 years later” which should mean Britt Reid is in his early 30s at worst. Lenore, therefore should have been no older than Britt, yet has a stated age in the film of “37.” Diaz is actually 39. While she could easily fit into a cougar role, I believe her sex kitten days are behind her.

Edward James Olmos has an awesome cameo as Axford.

Unfortunately, Christoph Waltz’s is given some horrible material in the role of the villain, Chudnofsky, which also suffers from being just an incredibly stupid character with little or no actual motivation other than to “be scary.”

Kudos to costume designer Kym Barrett for taking so many cues from the TV series especially when it came to the street clothes of Britt and Kato. The “hero” costumes were obligatory, but the street clothes giving a nod to the TV show was a very nice touch. Just enough to work, not too much as to be campy.

Likewise, whoever worked on the Black Beauty cars did an excellent job and stuck with the look and feel of the Dean Jeffries version of the Chrysler Imperial. I didn’t see a credit scroll by, but they were obviously labors of love and were truly beautiful.

I’m sorry, but I can’t recommend this one in theaters. Save it for Netflix.