The Green Lantern review
I had tried to remain cautiously optimistic about “The Green Lantern” despite all signs that it was probably not going to be very good, (namely the trailers). Unfortunately, the things that had worried me about those initial clips (an abundance of cartoonish CG, yet another superhero origin story, Blake Lively) were the least of the film’s problems. The film doesn’t even work as a basic perfunctory superhero film. Instead it spreads itself too thin trying to establish too much backstory and too many characters and in the process loses the audience entirely. (The crowd I saw it with today was largely silent throughout.) Not only does the film have to establish Ryan Reynolds as cocky fighter pilot Hal Jordan here on Earth, his prickly relationship with Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), and apparent enemy Peter Saarsgard, but it also has to set up the Green Lantern core, the planet of Oa and a giant amorphous world-swallower Parallax. Also, Tim Robbins and Angela Basset show up for some reason.
It’s a tricky juggling act and all the balls end up being dropped. Reynolds’ charisma is muted here, Lively is not up to her role, the CG is distracting and you’re never invested in the Hal’s journey. I’m not sure that the character can work on the big screen since it’s hard to be involved in a story with a hero who seems to have almost limitless power (even Superman has weaknesses). Green Lantern can materialize anything with his mind: a gun, a plane, anything, and since the rules aren’t really clear, there’s never any real danger. Reynolds is an actor who seems to have been on the verge of stardom for about a decade and was probably hoping for this to be his big launching pad to more interesting A-list projects. Despite all his media training, comic-con rounds, reciting the oath, he can’t bring the role to life.
It’s a real disappointment for DC Comics and Warner Bros. who have done such a great job with the Batman series, and taken daring chances on “Watchmen” and Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns,” that it’s hard to believe they let themselves backslide so far. It makes you appreciate a (mediocre) movie like “Thor” for handling similarly difficult material (mixing the fantastic with the grounded) to much better results. The film was directed by Martin Campbell, a workmanlike director who has done a great job on big budget action films before. He helmed both Pierce Brosnan’s and Daniel Craig’s Bond debuts “Goldeneye” and “Casino Royale” and I have a soft spot for his late 90s Antonio Banderas adventure “The Mask Of Zorro,” which was successful for what it was. But superhero/fantasy is clearly not his bag and it shows here.
