the green hornet

I have to confess I know next to nothing about the Green Hornet.

I've seen Dragon - the Bruce Lee story, so I know there was a TV series and that Lee played Kato, the martial artist that kicked bad guy ass, but apart from that, nothing. Oh, and it was obviously set in the 60s.

I'm also vaguely aware of Seth Rogan as a comedy actor. He was in the somewhat underrated Zac and Miri Make a Porno, but I can't say I've followed his career with any particular interest.

However, despite knowing nothing and seeing some non-to-positive reviews, I quite enjoyed the film. I think, however, that it could have been a lot smoother.

Mainly, I think the problem was that the original wasn't as obviously comedic as they'd intended it to be. I think they managed to hit the right level of action and they managed to get the more subtle/thematic gags down well, but what they didn't get was the more instantaneous humour.

Basically, as a bit of a film nerd I'm reasonably good at spotting ADR. ADR stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement, and is basically intended for overdubbing replacement lines onto a film, usually because the sound was rubbish due to equipment failures or because, say, there's a wind machine drowning everything out.

However, you can also use it to add lines (which is why it's also known as Additional Dialogue Recording) and the film is absolutely crammed with it. Now to be fair, it wasn't until watching the commentary that it was confirmed that the ADR was deliberate and was used to insert more gags, where they basically describe it as a god send. But the point is that has to be a worrying sign, if you're sticking gags over the top of loads things in order to boost the laughs.

As I say, the problem, I think, was they made an action movie with some humorous ideas and themes, but then realised that people don't tend to laugh out loud at humorous themes - they laugh at jokes.

And the jokes they've added are generally good; the action movie with humorous themes they made was quite good, it's just the way the first has been layered onto the second makes things clumsy and in a quite jarring way, though as I say, that may be because I'm a bit of a cinefile.

It also didn't help that some of the thematic humour they're going for undermines the film. For example, they try to flip on the head the idea of having a charismatic and memorable villain (your hero is only as good as your villain) - here he's a bit non-descript and while they do make mileage of that, it still fundamentally undermines the film. They also make a good fist of flipping the idea that the women is just eye-candy / a love interest for the hero, yet she still appears wrapped in a towel after a bath and dressed in her skimpys.

I dunno - it all just felt like it was a collection of some good ideas and some good action scenes (There's an odd tendency to really focus on the deaths of the villains, given the rating. Not in a gory way, the camera just seems to try to make sure to get the deaths full screen with a little pause. I think it's trying to make a point, but it just across as odd - especially when some of the deaths are a bit random/forced.) but the rest of the script could have done with going through a few more drafts.