Green Hornet

聲音檔

Two big commercial movies open this week. "The Green Hornet" is screenwriter and star Seth Rogen's update of the old pulp radio and TV show 美國三零至五零年代有聲音特效的電台劇about a masked hero and his kung fu sidekick.搭檔"The Dilemma" is a comedy, starring Vince Vaughn as a man who discovers a secret about the wife of his best friend, played by Kevin James.

Film critic David Edelstein has a review of both films.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: "The Green Hornet" and "The Dilemma" are big-budget male buddy pictures: The first is a semi-satirical action movie, the second, a comedy that turns serious. Both are well made, and both are tiresome.

Folks, the bromance motif, in which grown men wrestle with their masculinity while acting like juveniles, has been wrung dry. 擰乾 意味著乏味老梗

"The Green Hornet" at least is likable, and a refreshing change from all those heavy, angst-ridden superhero movies. The director is Michel Gondry of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," a virtuoso達人行家 at making childish fantasies takes wing夢想起飛. And I'm not the first to notice a Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road movie vibe between the two stars: Seth Rogen as Britt Reid, aka The Green Hornet, and Jay Chou as the kung fu master Kato, both smitten with著迷 Cameron Diaz in the Dorothy Lamour role.

Rogen's Britt is a ne'er-do-well rich痞子 kid, son of a disapproving media mogul, 媒體大亨played by Tom Wilkinson, who dies suddenly. It's all quite Oedipal. In the prologue, the father tears the head off his son's superhero doll. And The Green Hornet persona is born when Britt and Kato, who was his dad's assistant, knock the head off a statue of Britt's father. Their superhero gimmick伎倆 is that they'll pretend to be bad guys, but really fight criminals. And Britt wants them to be best buds.

(Soundbite of movie, "The Green Hornet")

Mr. JAY CHOU (Actor): (as Kato) We'll need a car.

Mr. SETH ROGEN (Actor): (as Britt Reid/The Green Hornet) Hells, yes. We'll need a car.

Mr. CHOU: (as Kato) With some weapons.

Mr. ROGEN: (as Britt Reid/The Green Hornet) Hmm.

Mr. CHOU: (as Kato) And armor.

Mr. ROGEN: (as Britt Reid/The Green Hornet) Cool rims. Spinning rims.

Mr. CHOU: (as Kato) I can do that.

Mr. ROGEN: (as Britt Reid/The Green Hornet) Kato, I want you to take my hand. I want you to come with me on this adventure.

Mr. CHOU: (as Kato) I'll go with you, but I don't want to touch you.

Mr. ROGEN: (as Britt Reid/The Green Hornet) Okay, you don't have to take my hand. But will you come with me on this adventure?

EDELSTEIN: The Hope-Crosby thing might work better if the quips 嘲諷的俏皮話were fresh and Chou was comfortable with English. He speaks as if he learned it phonetically, and unlike Bruce Lee's Kato in the old TV show, he talks a lot. Both for P.C. reasons and because Chou is a big star in the all-important Asian market, Kato refuses to be Britt's sidekick. So he and Rogen trade lame insults彼此用低級的嘲諷互虧 while fighting off the bad guys.

There are a few neat trick shots in which Kato moves at a different speeds than his slow-mo adversaries, and a couple of good 3D effects, like the split screens 分割畫面in which each frame is at a different spatial level. But it's not worth the 3D glasses surcharge. There's little in "The Green Hornet" that jumps out at you.