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Remember the 60's camp-fest that was Batman? So does Seth Rogen, but since he couldn't make a movie about that, we have The Green Hornet.
The story of making a movie based on the 1930's radio drama and the short lived 60's television series has been a one of starts and endings filled with hope and woe. Everyone from George Clooney to Kevin Smith has been attached, mentioned or courted to bring the Hornet to the screen. It took the bombastic "talents" of Seth 'I like the sound of my own voice' Rogen to finally do it. Ironically the biggest thing that brings this movie down is the man who brought it to the screen! Rogen is awful in the role! He barges through every scene as if trying to get to the front of the crowd in Pamploma. There are times that you just want the scene to end just so someone else's mug might, MIGHT, fill the frame!
The original Hornet, whether radio or television, was NOT a comically campy story. While the villains and stories where often a little over the top, the basis was a serious and intelligent drama. Unfortunately that fact was either forgotten or blatantly ignored by director Michel Gondry and writers Rogen and Evan Goldberg. This version reduces Britt Reid, aka 'The Green Hornet' to a bumbling party boy with daddy issues who upon inheriting the families media empire, (you know this is fantasy when the flagship of an empire is a newspaper) and the incredibly talented martial arts expert/mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou), decides to use his wealth to infiltrate the criminal underworld and fight crime from within as a masked super-hero.
Huh?
See, thanks to a brief glimpse into his crappy childhood we are told of an attempt to help a young girl on the playground from a bully only to be sent home himself for fighting, and just in case you might forget that little tidbit in the first 45 minutes of the film, this is told to us AGAIN by Britt Reid to Kato as they share their respective bad father/boss stories. Anyway.. that, and a random encounter with some punks, is the birth of the Green Hornet.
After that there is a lot of 'splosions, and some scenery chewing with Christoph Waltz and, for a reason I can only assume was an early attempt at getting people in the seats, the introduction of Cameron Diaz as Reid's secretary Lenore Chase.
The film while having some slight promise in the story falls flat on the every moving face of Seth Rogen and the complete waste of talent that is everyone else in the movie.
Oh and the 3D? For the love of everything holy, SAVE YOUR MONEY!! This film has no business in 3D! It wasn't filmed in 3D and was converted just to raise the box office totals! IF you can find a 2D showing, my local theater had all of two showings on a Saturday night, then save yourself the extra cash and spend it on a upsizing the popcorn and soda. Don't worry if you have to go the bathroom during the film...you wont miss anything.
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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"
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Cause a bigger screen and more wasted dollars was just exactly what this movie needed! 
