Review - The Green Hornet

I'm not entirely sure Michel Gondry has ever seen an action movie before. In films like The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind, the French filmmaker made a name for himself cultivating a blend of whimsy and naivety, like a slow kid building a fort out of pizza boxes at monster camp. So, he seemed a bizarre choice to direct a comic book-style action film, the cinematic equivalent of drafting a figure skater to play on the Flyers.

But in the first few moments of The Green Hornet, Gondry turns his confusion to his advantage, in a scene in which James Franco explains the conventions of an action movie villain to Christoph Waltz, who plays ageing crime lord Chudnofsky. From there, the film takes unapologetic joy in discovering action movie cliches as if for the first time, resulting in an energetic and creative film, if a somewhat silly one.

Based on George W. Trendle's pulp hero, The Green Hornet stars Seth Rogen as Britt Reid, the spoiled son of a wealthy newspaperman (Tom Wilkinson). When his father dies, Britt inherits his media empire. And after discovering that his dad's mechanic Kato (Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou) is a few quadratic equations away from designing Inspector Gadget's hat, he dedicates his life to masked crime fighting. If those two sentences don't appear to be connected, that's because they really aren't, as the script, co-written by Rogen, takes great liberties with logic. But Gondry's childlike fascination with the action genre results in an infectious giddiness that permeates the entire film, so there's a lot that's forgivable.

There's also a lot that's weird, from an early sequence that sets a Keystone Kops routine in what could be Jay Leno's garage to a cameo by Edward Furlong as a drug addict. Cement trucks do America's Best Dance Crew routines, and cars plow through meth labs, which seems like a more explosive version of mixing pop rocks and soda. And it's all infused with a ridiculous energy augmented by some genuinely impressive action scenes.

The performances are equally entertaining, with the highlights coming from the supporting cast. Waltz is brilliant as the psychotic Chudnofsky, mixing his Colonel Landa character from Inglourious Basterds with Werner Herzog's unhinged intensity, and Cameron Diaz is lively and radiant as Reid's secretary Lenore. But while Chou is mainly effective as Kato, he struggles a bit with some of the snappier patter. Nevertheless, the cast commits fully to the film's unique atmosphere.

Where The Green Hornet does disappoint is in its comedy. Seth Rogen has proved that he's an affable, funny performer with a strong sense of timing, and he's written some great dialogue before. But here, he seems to rely mostly on semi-improvisational, slightly lazy fumbling rather than sharply scripted lines. It's the kind of comedy that's hilarious if you're sitting with your buddies on the couch, halfway through a bowl and an episode of Darkwing Duck, but it can misfire easily on screen. It doesn't fail consistently—in fact, it probably works more often than it doesn't. But it does deaden the pacing on occasion, dragging out scenes that should be light and agile.