Has anyone in this school even heard of the Green Hornet? Probably not many people. And yet they chose to make it into a movie. The Green Hornet is a masked vigilante creation from DC Comics. (Now many of you probably have absolutely no idea what DC is, but you’ve definitely come in contact with it. DC is a comic book production company that has brought us Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, the Green Lantern, and Flash). Michael Gondry’s The Green Hornet, though not a great movie, is bursting at the seams with fun.

The Green Hornet opens to show a 10-year-old boy, Britt Reid, being led by the hand into his father’s office at a Los Angeles newspaper, The Daily Sentinel. Right away you see that his father, James Reid (Tom Wilkinson), is a hard man. Little Britt has just lost his mother, is acting out, and his father tells him that he’s good for nothing. Fast-forward 10 years to party boy Britt (Seth Rogen) , who is completely hammered and dancing with America’s Next Top Model. He shows off his house, or rather mansion, and they go through his gigantic garage with dozens of vintage and sports cars. Again, he is scolded by his father for being a deadbeat. Britt leaves scoffing and returns to find out that his father is dead from an allergic reaction to a bee sting. Suddenly, Britt is the owner of a giant newspaper and must make executive decisions in order to keep his father’s company alive.

In the process of getting his father’s affairs in order, he meets Kato (Jay Chou), a man from Shanghai that worked on Britt’s father’s cars, made his coffee, and had some serious kung-fu moves. The men bond, get drunk, and inadvertently save two people from some thugs while, ironically, appearing as thugs themselves. This gives Britt an idea: why not save people all the time? So he and his trusty partner Kato become masked crime fighters with tricked out gas guns and their car, Black Beauty.

The Green Hornet is different from other superheroes, mainly because of the lack of powers (unless you count Kato’s Matrixy moves), and also because they use Britt’s power at the newspaper to make everyone believe that they are bad guys in order to catch the actual bad guys. Also, they have absolutely no idea what they are doing: Instead of planning every move carefully, they ask their secretary, Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), to tell them what a criminal like the Green Hornet would do…and then they do it. And of course, where there’s a hero, there’s a villain. Big time crime lord Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds), waves around his big double barrel gun and tries to make himself intimidating while personally punishing the anyone who dares get in his way. Seeing the Green Hornet as bad business competition, he makes up his mind to eliminate them.

A typical Seth Rogen role, the kind that can be seen in Knocked Up, Britt Reid comes off as vulgar, rude, obnoxious—all the while making his character funnier and funnier. Britt himself can be very unlikeable, but Rogen did a very good job copying a spoiled brat. Kato is Chou’s first role in an American movie, and he delivers it like Jackie Chan did in Rush Hour. The amazing Christoph Waltz once again plays a charming but deadly villain with a Napoleon complex. Like his performance as SS Officer Hans Landa, Chudnofsky (he just HAD to be Russian) is shown as a man who, though he seems almost sweet, is actually very dangerous. Waltz’s acting definitely brought everyone else’s to shame, especially with his real Russian sounding accent. I have absolutely no idea why they casted Cameron Diaz. She was literally just a pretty face, nothing more. What really bothered me was the 3D. At one point during the movie, my glasses tipped over my nose, so I took them off only to discover that it was all 2D. Only about half the movie, i.e. the action scenes, actually appeared in 3D.

As a quality film, the Green Hornet just doesn’t make the cut. It’s only acceptable as a movie just to kill the time. The genre under which The Green Hornet would fall under would definitely be comedy, separating it completely from all other hero movies, which are much darker and more serious. Though it was sometimes hilarious to the point of hyperventilation, in other parts it felt like the jokes were very few and far apart. So if you’re looking for to hang out with friends, then you should watch Michael Gondry’s The Green Hornet. Otherwise, keep looking.