Green Hornet

The Green Hornet has about as much intellectual stimulation as the popcorn I ate while watching it, but like the popcorn, it is buttery, delicious, and fun.

Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid, your average playboy millionaire who decides to start fighting crime after his father accuses him of being a failure and dies. Seth Rogen approaches the part with his normal stoner/slacker style, and for the most part, it works out well for him. Together with Kato, his right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime, he takes to the streets in a pimped-out Chrysler (yo dawg, I heard you like machine guns, so we put machine guns in your cars so you can kill while you drive), posing as a theatrical criminal in order to trick the underworld.

As funny as Seth Rogen is as the lazy and underachieving Britt Reid, that one trick pony only has so many performances left before audiences are going to get tired of rooting for the pudgy, Jewish, stoned underdog, but Green Hornet was a great first step away from the bong-boy and into a real action hero role. The few fight scenes he has, he literally kicks ass.

What was really surprising about Rogen in this picture was not his performance but just the fact that he was such a goddamn fucking workhorse. In addition to starring in it he co-wrote, co-produced, and even did some of the casting.

Jay Chou, who is apparently a huge pop star over in Taiwan, plays Kato, Britt Reid's right hand man, mechanic, driver, bodyguard, and sidekick, who is also the only part of the crime fighting duo who can actually physically fight crime. As Kato (the part formerly played by Bruce Lee), Jay takes the term "action star" and punches it straight in the balls and makes it his bitch. I hope to see more of him. He made a great straight man for Rogen's goofball antics.

The movie has lots of laughs, goes for gizzard when it comes to fight sequences, and the black Chrysler they drive around in, dubbed Black Beauty, just about made me jizz all over the already-sticky theater floor.

While it may not be the kind of flick that makes you think, it did prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I need a tiny Asian sidekick.

3.5 Stars.