The Green Hornet 2011

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: Can a genius and an average Joe pair up and put egos aside to serve mindless adventure? Gondry and Rogen have. Read more

Adam Graham, Detroit News: A big, sloppy, loud, grating mess of a movie. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: There are some nifty things in between the lulls... Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Quite a bit less than the sum of its appealing parts. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Rogen is just playing a version of the good-natured, wisecracking slacker he plays in everything, which never feels like a comfortable fit alongside the coolly efficient Chou. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Injecting a devil-may-care attitude into a franchise-focused blockbuster only gets you so far. When all is said and done, this wasp's got no sting. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The Green Hornet doesn't seem worth the outrageous 3-D-glasses surcharge. In all senses, there's little that jumps out at you. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The film's only unqualified success is the end title sequence -- because it's genuinely stylish, because it looks like it was shot in genuine 3-D and, most of all, because it's the end. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: You'd expect Gondry's version of a superhero movie to be either brilliantly creative or spectacularly misguided, and it's neither; just sporadically funny but more often plodding. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: It's a strange, shapeless, rarely satisfying, but generally amiable movie in which everyone appears to be faking it as they go along, and almost -- almost -- getting away with it. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: The story falls apart, while Gondry ratchets up the silly action so far over the top the structure of the film can't support it. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Did I mention that the movie's in 3-D? Someone should have let Gondry know. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The movie lopes along from one half-baked scene to the next, interrupted on occasion by car-porn sequences involving the hero's luminous limo the Black Beauty. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Too much. Too numbing. Too coy. And ultimately too violent. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Here's a 3-D movie that should have been shot in Zero-D. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Despite its obvious angling to become a franchise, this Green Hornet offers little that's worth committing to even the "cult flick" chamber of your brain. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: If unmodulated decibel level and childish, dorkish energy alone could lower a city's crime rate, then consider the cartoon bad guys of cartoon Los Angeles flattened. Read more

Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter: Despite some entertaining moments, this long-in-gestation crime-fighter feature never reaches top speed. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: An anemic, 97-pound weakling of the action comedy persuasion, "Hornet" is a boring bromedy that features mumblecore heroics instead of the real thing. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: This Hornet is a big, boisterous action-comedy - a funny, exciting and intentionally goofy summer movie that just happens to arrive in the middle of January. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Part origin story, part spoof, part bromance -- the movie can't decide. It winks at itself constantly, but only to hide its cluelessness. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: A facetious industrial product, and the first out-and-out bore of the year. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Once you get to the fiends and fights that make a comic book movie really work, things go stale. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Michel Gondry has crafted an irreverently funny, ultramodern take on the 1930s radio serial, with a vibe so casual you half expect star Seth Rogen to amble off screen and put his feet up on the seat next to you. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: There might be a funny movie in a story about a crime fighter who's in it only for the publicity, but "The Green Hornet" isn't it. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Hard to think of a more mystifying mismatch of filmmaker and material. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Even as a mindless diversion, it's weak. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: The first nearly awful film of 2011. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "The Green Hornet" is an almost unendurable demonstration of a movie with nothing to be about. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The big-screen Green Hornet, while hardly classic comic-book filmmaking, ain't half bad. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: I'm pleased to report that the movie is entirely watchable and often pretty fun, in a mishmashed, patchy kind of way. Put that on your poster, Columbia Pictures! Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: There's nothing here but a concept and a marketing and merchandising strategy, at the center of which somebody - oh, no - had to come up with an actual movie. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Is Gondry aware that he's making a film about both white male privilege and sexual harassment in the workplace? Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The movie these guys have come up with is fresh, funny and a bewildering surprise. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Seth Rogen is the Green Hornet. What else do you need to know? Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: There are elements of a sharp hero/sidekick inversion here: Kato is the handsome, brilliant inventor and karate expert; Britt is, well, rich enough to pay the salary of someone like Kato. But the inversion is inevitably incomplete. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: By the time The Green Hornet collapses into a mess of hackneyed car chases and flying glass and bullets, it feels less like the promised irreverent take on the superhero genre, and more like the latest iteration of the Rush Hour movies. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A too-clever-by-half attempt to both satirize and celebrate the superhero genre. Read more

Leah Rozen, TheWrap: [It] clocks in at a bloated 118 minutes. There is not, I promise you, 118 minutes worth of vital plot, special effects or comic business in this movie. Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: [Gondry] has done a stellar job of putting his wacky auteurial stamp on a comedy which is only semi-coherent but still very funny and impeccably fashioned. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: As directed by Michel Gondry, Hornet's visuals have a few pixilated flourishes. But the production design is more cluttered than eye-catching, and the near-pointless use of 3-D simply muddies the photography. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: The film is a blast. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: The Green Hornet provides a half-hour's worth of mildly entertaining travesty before collapsing in a clamor of bombastic action sequences and lame wisecracks. Read more

Dan Kois, Washington Post: This morning, the unconscious bodies of three pickpockets were found in front of the Post's offices. Safety-pinned to one was an envelope containing the following movie review. Read more