GREEN HORNET

GREEN HORNET (Grade PG-13 for profanity, drug content, sensuality, ongoing sequences of cartoon-type violent action):  It's a sci-fi-action-fantasy-comedy, dominated almost entirely by Seth Rogan & his improvisational, laid-back touch, making him largely responsible for obviously dabbling in everything from script to acting; in other words, like it or not, this is a Seth Rogan flick. 

Plenty has been written about the psychology of humor, most of it coming down to the fact that while there are a few universal devices, it is the society in which it occurs that takes on a certain coloring, commonly accepted as funny.  In our contemporary, frankly sloppy, casual reliance on improv, also relying heavily on perversity, profanity, and, in general, anything juvenile & anti-social, we have been subjected to the likes of the "Jackass" and "Fockers" series, and others that brought in the moola but only dragged comedy (and taste) down to new lows.

OK, so now we have slobby Rogan as Britt Reid, a spoiled son of a wealthy, successful father in the newspaper business.  Father spends his spare time berating his son mercilessly on his lack of interest in anything beyond living the easy life..  After Dad's death, Britt takes over the paper, only to discover the horrible truth about the pervasively corrupt media business, and with the aid of a Chinese mechanical genius, takes on the bad guys as the Green Hornet & his side-kick Cato (Jay Chou, who frequently steals the show with his tongue-in-cheek lugubriousness).  The battles are destructive, noisy, zip-fast & colorful in the true comic book style - fun at that level. 

Rogan, who will never replace Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton or others of their ilk, has made a name for himself in the improvisation echelon that passes, for better or worse, as humor.  Dominating every scene, he sporadically proves he can be funny, and he can (with director Michel Gondry in step) plow through one crazy comic-book instance after another with off & on success (worst when he intrudes on the action with pseudo-serious diatribes or when he tries to make time with his charming secretary (Cameron Diaz), reminding us of a Manny Farber comment about George Kuchar, "He performs as if he - and his entire movie - love its own body odor."   

After all the battling between good & evil, guess who wins at the end.  Not us, who are forced to sit through almost two hours of this slap-dash, inconsistent material, including a pale imitation of a Pink Panther boss/Oriental servant destructive fight, a silly hip-hop routine that's actually embarrassing to witness, and lines like, "If there's one thing I like about my women, it's balls."
(Grade:  C-)