How to Make a Fat Guy Lose Weight or The Most Elaborate Weight Loss Scheme Since That Asshole from Subway Ate a Bunch of Shitty Sandwiches and Didn't Stop Telling Everyone About it for a Decade

Rarely do I find a middle ground with movies because even with an alright movie, I'll find one aspect of it that I dislike and tend to focus on it. But a movie that has recently tread that ground is The Green Hornet. Sometimes mediocre films like this end up being less enjoyable than a really bad one. A horrible movie usually yields a mild amount of laughter or in some cases it becomes more humorous than a decent comedy (eg. Troll 2). Fortunately, this movie is so inoffensive in its banality that you couldn't possibly hate it.

The movie focuses on Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), a twenty-something bachelor who spends his time partying and not contributing to society. His father is the owner of a newspaper and is not impressed with his son's lack of direction. Britt must take over the business when he finds out his father has died, which ultimately causes him to become a freedom fighter/anti-hero/guy with a cool suit. By this point you've probably clued in to the fact that I've just described the plot to every "superhero" movie ever. The only difference being that Britt and his partner/father's mechanic/crazy, coffee-making, gadget-inventing, shit-kicking martial artist Kato (Jay Chou) decided to portray themselves as the bad guys so that they don't attract as much attention, a concept that is obliterated by Britt approximately three minutes later.

So it should be obvious that this is a very by-the-numbers kind of movie. Seth Rogen and director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) clearly tried their hardest to keep this movie interesting, and although it may be formulaic it rarely felt boring. Christolph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) manages to steal every scene he's in as the haplessly named villain, Chudnofsky. His lack of confidence in his ability to appear frightening is actually one of the funniest traits of a comedic villain in a long while. Cameron Diaz plays the love interest who isn't actually interested, and is over all a pretty boring and under-developed character. She's necessary to the story, so it's unfortunate that she was so bland.

 

 

U SCARED BRO?

The 3D is prevalent for twenty minutes and then after that I can only assume that whoever worked on it said "Fuck it" and skipped to the credits, which are by far the best 3D visuals in the whole movie. As cool as it may be, having stylized credits jump out at you is pretty useless, and probably not worth the money they spent on it. This movie will be held on a shiny pedastal as a golden example of how not to convert a movie to 3D.

The Green Hornet has some good action scenes, a few laughs, terrible 3D and not much else. Its story is formulaic and the ending is anti-climactic, but you can tell that everyone involved put forth their best effort. Although they failed to make something unique like they had sought to, the difference between this and a mediocre movie that the industry has churned out for a quick buck is that this movie, with all of its flaws, has a heart, while "Forgettable Hollywood Trash Cube 4" has a soul-sucking, brain-draining black hole.