5. A secretary to mastermind your heroic efforts.
Cameron Diaz, who is described as “hot” in one minute and castigated for being ancient in the next. Our hero is stunned to learn that she is 36. Of course, she can operate a flash-drive, which is more than the superhero can do.
Where do you get a sushi-shaped flash drive? This ever so literal plot device is tossed by a fireman after finding it IN THE MOUTH OF THE DEAD VILLAIN!
Because in this movie, you can't GET A CLUE!
6. A sidekick, I almost forgot!
A scientific genius/mechanical genius/medical genius/martial arts master who was working for the old man as his mechanic. “He really liked the work I did on that car,” he says. And apparently was willing to pay for a foundry, a chemical plant, weapons research, and a custom tire manufacturing plant in the garage. Like I said, it makes Bruce Wayne’s garage look ill. And his bat-cave, too.
After all, Kato can design a gun that delivers a blast of sleeping gas in a pellet in a few days. Or make three weaponized 1960s luxury cars in a week and a half. Or design the most over-powered espresso machine on the planet.
Kato's own martial arts skills are based on 1) a tough childhood as an orphan in Shanghai, 2) watching Bruce Lee movies (one drawing of Bruce in his notebook), 3) practice on a few pieces of leftover kung-fu movie props. But this makes sense, because when eKato is excited, he can see in infra-red and move in ultra-violet to soundlessly kick, chop, and toss bad guys who then . . . disappear.
Kato's skills are so awesome that his boss can pick them up by association. He doesn’t need to get into shape, or practice, or even watch a Bruce Lee movie. When Kato is about to be de-capitated, this sidekick can rely on him to attack about ten bad guys who are nowhere near where the Big Bad Guy (cause he’s Russian) is about to chop Kato's head off while he's trapped under a heavy piece of debris.
And Kato can come up with superhero costumes. A chauffeur’s suit for himself. Which was an image from the 1920s that just lives on in what popular culture on what planet? But Kato's boss finds that a green tie and a fedora works for him.
7. Conflict.
Not with the super villain, who has taken over all crime in Los Angeles but needs charisma, but with your side-kick.
When Green Hornet and Kato finally start fighting, it's over the girl that they both have agreed is smarter than they are, even though she majored in journalism and didn’t have a job, while Kato has mastered physics, chemistry, metallurgy, weaponry, black-smithing, computer-aided design, mechanics, martial arts, and engineering. Then we get to see the out-of-shape Green Hornet knock Kato over a few times with his own expensive stuff. And Kato manages to kick, chop, and toss the Green Hornet without giving him a black eye, bruise, or a nose-bleed. How cool is that??
8. Good old-fashioned bigotry.
The Green Hornet can say whatever racist, sexist, piggy, stupid, ignorant thing he wants to—because there is someone onscreen to make a face. Oh, eventually they say something, but they are so charmed by his __________, that they first join forces with him. Then they tell him off.
Christ, please spare us any more of these morally ambiguous superheroes.
I hope that Jay Chou, who played Kato, goes on to a long, prosperous career in Hollywood. He’s got the chops for a musical martial arts hero and the looks for any romantic lead. He even might have been able to handle some jokes if the screenwriters had bothered to give him any traces of irony.
If you want a movie about a morally ambiguous superhero, try Hancock with Will Smith.
I’m busy trying to scrub the green out of my eyes.
This movie makes no sense at all. I guess that if you drink a lot, sleep around, destroy property, and piss off your really really rich dad, one day you too, can turn into a super-hero. All it takes is:
1. Coffee.
Yes. Even superheroes need to wake up and a cappuccino with a leaf shape in the frothy milk is essential. Drink it out of gold encrusted bone china, because that’s good.
If I were Starbucks, I’d be soooo pissed at not getting a product placement.
2. A newspaper.
Yes, most of us would settle for a popular blog, but if you can have a huge printing press to wreck, that’s good. Also, if you have a newspaper, you can publicize your deeds, like those bad ones you do to get people to leave you free to commit your good deeds or oh, somehow this made sense . . . . no it didn't.
3. A statue of your father.
Yep, while some families are content to order a headstone with the deceased mother’s name on it ready for the father’s information to come, these people erect a 25% bigger than life-size bronze statue for the grave. And unveil it at the funeral. Because a superhero kid doesn’t need to plan his dad’s funeral and the “people” who ordered the statue don’t want to put it in a public place or in front of the newspaper building or anywhere but the gravesite.
Can you get a large bronze statue done in a weekend?
4. A mansion.
It’s important that you sleep in the pool house of the mansion because then you don’t seem to be the spoiled son. Just the only son. Also, you can fire all the staff, but one maid who apparently stays on out of affection. No security. You have that gate out front. And everyone knows that rich people’s stuff dusts itself.
In the beginning, we understand that the kid is rich and Dad, mean old Dad, owns a newspaper. Then we start seeing the house. Since most newspapers have cut back or folded completely in the last ten years, how does Dad make the newspaper support the mansion of a third-world dictator? The Olympic size pool, the 3,000 square foot garage with at least ten classic sports cars. It made Bruce Wayne’s garage look small
Of course the rose garden looked pretty tiny compared to the house, but all it took was one bee-sting to knock off Dad.
TV stars with ties on
Over the Hill Phil
?!!!Why I stopped at 39
