01.12.11
Teeth-grindingly awful
DD watched The Green Hornet when young. Bafflingly, I remember liking it. Could it have been the saving grace of the theme music?
In advance of the new movie, SyFY rolled out old Green Hornet episodes last night. I tuned in. Couldn’t be any worse than Ghost Hunters, pro wrestling or Caprica, right? (Caprica’s only distinguishing characteristic seemed to be its creator’s stealthy desire to bring brown and black fedoras back into fashion.)
Reassessment.
The Green Hornet featured leaden pacing, intelligence-insulting dialog and lots more excellence like chase scenes shot in fake darkness, often flanked by unnecessarily dim lighting in others.
Even the theme music I had remembered fondly was a bit poverty-stricken.
Here’s an episode, excerpted on YouTube. It’s called “The Frog Is a Deadly Weapon” and it goes downhill from there.
It’s distinguished by the fact that nothing happens in the first ten minutes, except for somebody being pulled into water by two frogmen. And it was only a thirty minute show. (Wait for some absorbing office talk about going to get a ‘burger at the “Cotillion Room.”)
A businessman asks Britt Reid, the Green Hornet, if he knew a man who has been found dead.
Reid: “Yes.”
Most episodes weren’t worth waiting through for any Bruce Lee fight scenes.
Jump on the grenades, if you dare.
However, one thing jumps out. Despite the old Green Hornet’s threadbare and unintentionally comical nature it was played drop-dead serious.
No idea what this means for the new Seth Rogen feature.
It is hard, though, to imagine Seth Rogen, no matter how much weight he’s lost, pulling off a character like Britt Reid — no matter how poor the original was — after seeing the former as the hefty mall cop in Observe & Report, except as a joke. The guy can’t do even a poor man’s urbane.