First Shot: It just writes itself

For some time now, smartass oddsmakers like me have had our eye on one picture to join Showgirls in the pantheon of Razzie infamy: Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet.

If you were looking for a perfect storm of po-mo wrongheadedness, you couldn’t do much better than a “comedic” take on an early 20^th century pulp hero, as assayed by a fleshy hophead whose star among the chemically unimpaired is already fading fast. A movie that both Stephen Chow and Nicolas Cage have decided is beneath them.

Of course, the very naming of Seth Rogen to the part of newspaper-publisher-cum-vigilante Britt Reid was like a clarion call to dung beetles. (You only get one Michael Keaton in a lifetime, boys and girls.) But the chances that the film would be not only putrid but terminally self-impressed skyrocketed when Rogen went on Letterman to defend the “nontraditional” casting, expressing genuine hurt and bewilderment that anybody would question the notion of a Jewish superhero.

Oh, right. Like that’s the problem here.

The omens of a box-office apocalypse continue to accrue -- most recently the Los Angeles Times’ pow-wow with Hornet co-star Edward James Olmos. Savor for yourself the dexterity with which the paper dances around the subject of the film’s inevitable suckitude, including a fingers-crossed reference to the “now-svelte” Rogen. (If anything less than morbid obesity now constitutes being “svelte,” I’m Jason Statham.) And you’ve got to admire the straight face the Times puts on when repeating Olmos’ claim that the film is “humming along nicely despite all the turbulence.” That’s like saying the Gosselins’ marriage is strong and committed despite all of the babysitter-fucking.

Then again, this is the same guy who goes on to fondly recall the 1966 Hornet TV series as “campy,” when it was actually canceled after one season for failing to ape the camp tone of producer William Dozier’s concurrent hit, Batman. So much for long-term memory, Mr. Edward James Almost. (Bitch, pleeeeze.)

What this story needs is not just an exclamation point, but one etched firmly into the mass mind in a Ralph Steadman-esque psychotic scrawl. And it may have gotten one Tuesday afternoon, when L.A. cops were summoned to the Hornet set to inspect what Entertainment Weekly calls a “suspicious-looking metal object.” That sounds like any given member of Slipknot to me, but EW doesn’t dish such specifics. They merely report that the offending item was – are ya sitting down? -- “not a bomb.” Oh, and that the set was therefore “clear of threat.”

See, the joke here is … nah, it’s bad luck to take bait like that. God could strike me fat.

Posted by Steve Schneider on 9/30/2009 1:50:19 AM Permalink | Comments: 1