As the loveable buffoon in 'Knocked Up' and 'Pineapple Express', Seth Rogen became a king to misfits everywhere, only to then smudge the royal seal with two duds, 'Observe and Report' and 'Funny People'. Now he's turned his attention towards a character who's already fought crime in comics and on radio and TV. Rogen fans deserve a movie where they can point at the screen and say, "That's my guy."
This isn't it.
The son of a newspaper tycoon (Wilkinson), Britt Reid (Rogen) has led a very sad life. Motherless from an early age, bullied by his father and trying to block out the pain with material possessions and one night stands, Britt has never taken responsibility for his actions or decided what he wants to be. He gets a crash course in adulthood, however, when his father dies suddenly and a man who can barely dress himself becomes the owner of an empire. Britt, of course, shows his maturity by sacking almost all the household staff, only to realise that the most important one, Kato (Chou), is among those who have received their marching orders.
Kato is the man who made Britt's coffee every morning.
With Kato reinstated, Britt gets his caffeine levels back to abnormal and wakes up to the fact that there's much more to his taciturn employee than meets the eye. He's a mechanical genius, a martial arts master, a dreamer and the brother Britt never had. Soon the duo are cracking open the beers as they try to figure out how they can fulfil their potential and big themselves up. Running a multi-million dollar business? Informing public opinion through the newspaper? Or going out at night in masks, squaring up to homeboys and making Los Angeles a safer place?
The big difficulty with superhero (or in this case not-so-superhero) movies is that every year fans' expectations are raised and while 'The Green Hornet' might have had the wow factor in the 'Batman Forever' summer of 1995, in 2011 it's just another movie that could have been so much more. It fails to make the most of actors of the calibre of Olmos ('Miami Vice' hardman Castillo), Waltz (Oscar-winning as the villain in 'Inglourious Basterds') and Chad Coleman (Dennis 'Cutty' Wise from 'The Wire'), puts Diaz in the mix when there's no need for her and only provides occasional sparks between Rogen and Chou - bizarre given that Rogen was the co-writer and showed how good he was with male friendship with his scripts for 'Superbad' and 'Pineapple Express'.
There are a couple of decent action scenes and laughs, but with a director as talented as Michel Gondry ('Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind') behind the lens, you want fantastic not flat-pack. As for the 3D, it's yet another example of the movie equivalent of go-faster stripes on a car.
If you want something where the sidekick is the real hero and the hero is the less-than-useful sidekick watch (or re-watch) John Carpenter's 'Big Trouble in Little China'.
Harry Guerin
