Green Cheese

Campy B-list superhero flick tests the ‘essence of willpower’

(June 23, 2011) Reviews:

GREEN LANTERN. Every so often in the miasma of our local film offerings there is a brief moment of light. Such a moment occurred a week ago with Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. But, as is too often the case, the moment proved ephemeral, serving simply to create a bit of hope only to cruelly smash it. So, what I get for Father’s Day is Jim Carrey with a bunch of flightless but presumably cute birds and another superhero comic adaptation of a character that dates from 1940.

GALLERY >

Okay, maybe I wasn’t such a great dad, but I didn’t think I was that bad. I thought I at least deserved Emma Roberts in The Art of Getting By, a film that opened nationwide on Friday in a nation that we must not be part of.

So, on the principle of the lesser of two evils, I opted for DC Comics over comic Carrey. As it turns out, Green Lantern is pretty much like almost all superhero film adaptations. Somewhere around 1 million years BCE, a group of Guardians using the “essence of willpower” was formed to protect the universe from the power of Fear, here incarnated as Parallax (surely one of the ugliest aliens since Alien). But Parallax’s power has grown and now he is attacking the Guardians. One wounded Guardian crashes on Earth and sends out his green ring to find the next Guardian.

Enter screw-up test pilot Hal Jordan (a buffed Ryan Reynolds). As the first human anointed Guardian, we follow him as he gains his costume, does a few test runs of his new powers and saves a few Earthlings. But, will he find the quality inside himself that will enable him to save the world and win the heart of his Lois Lane, here called Carol Ferris (Blake Lively, who looks good in a variety of outfits)?

The film’s tone is all over the map but its primary one is cheesy, which might have been all right once before better comic adaptations, such as the rebooted Batman series, came along. Cheesy would be a compliment for the acting.

While you ponder the question posed above, I will be busily hoping I didn’t really see a sequel setup while suppressing the yellow powder of evil and finding my green light of fearless willpower. In that way, I may be able to conjure up a real film such as The Tree of Life, or even Emma Roberts. Hell, I’ll settle for a film aimed at someone who graduated from the first grade. PG-13. 112m. 3D at the Broadway (also 2D) and Fortuna, 2D at the Mill Creek and the Minor.

—Charlie Myers

1 2 3 NEXT PAGE >SHARE