I don’t know about you, but I always get such a kick out of these “Mockbuster” movies, you know the ones I’m talking about, those straight-to-DVD/made-for-TV titles they make just to capitalize on the success of REAL movies for a quick buck? Movies like Almighty Thor, Battle OF Los Angeles, Chop Kick Panda immediately spring to mind. Well I’ve got a REALLY cheesy one for you, only this time they’re trying to horn in on the success of The Green Lantern and… wait a minute… I seem to remember being at the theater for this… wait… oh my God!… That WAS The Green Lantern! Egad!
I can’t think of a better way to sum up this entire flick other than that it might have been great to catch on the SyFy channel on a weekday when there’s nothing else on TV, but $10.50 to see it in the theater on a Friday night is a CRIME, a crime against humanity damn it and if somebody in Hollywood isn’t dragged kicking and screaming to The Hague for this then what the hell good are the so-called “International Courts”?!
First of all, I’m tired of these movies that teeter on the balance between being live-action, and a cartoon, it just doesn’t work. Yeah, computers are amazing, when you’re on YouTube, or Facebook, or need something with weight to keep a piece of paper from blowing away, but you know what? They’re not so amazing that countless hours and hours of work rendering a stupid costume like the Green Lantern’s beats a real costume they could have bought at Party City for twenty dollars.
Hollywood seems to forget why people go to see these movies in the first place. It’s because we enjoy seeing our favorite superheroes come to life! And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that meant seeing real men in real tights. That’s what makes us nerd-boys crazy for superhero movies. Maybe even a little curious. But think about it, how popular would The Dark Knight have been if instead of putting Christian Bale in a badass bat suit, they just animated Batman’s entire body from the neck down in every scene?
Though Ryan Reynolds certainly may not have helped matters a whole hell of a lot by being the Green Lantern, in all fairness, it could always have been worse (Seth Rogan could have had the idea to make this movie and cast himself as the Green Lantern). No, this movie sucks for a lot more reasons.
The story is lame. How true it is to the comics I couldn’t tell you, seeing as how I was never really a fan of the Green Lantern to begin with (on that note, I was also the only asshole in the theater wearing a Batman shirt among a sea of Green Lantern shirts) but all that is irrelevant to me, because if the movie can’t entertain more people than just a select group of geeks, then it’s already an out and out failure. The most laughable was Hal Jordan’s flashbacks to his father. If I wanted to be absolutely embarrassed watching a corny movie, I would have went and saw Mr. Popper’s Penguins!
The graphics are weak. For a movie that relies so heavily on graphics, perhaps they should have considered actually having some that were worth a damn. At times I couldn’t tell what this Parallax looked more like, a space octopus, or flying vomit. The only character that looked real was Dr. Hector Hammond. Unfortunately, he served no valuable purpose in the movie whatsoever, which further illustrates my point that the story was lame.
That said, if I were to rate it, I’d give Mr. Popper’s Penguins zero stars.