It's not easy being 'Green'

IF YOU FIND the idea of Seth Rogen as a crime-fighting superhero to be ridiculous, you have company - so does "Green Hornet" director Michel Gondry.

Gondry's completely facetious action romp trades in Rogen's comic persona of sloth, arrested development and underachievement - Rogen's been an incompetent stockroom worker ("40-Year-Old Virgin"), web designer ("Knocked Up"), pornographer ("Zack and Miri make a Porno"), police officer ("Superbad") and security officer ("Observe and Report").

Gondry applies his anti-star's legacy of failure to the title role in "Hornet," that of rich kid party boy Britt Reid, a Prince Hal who's thrust into adulthood when his autocratic publisher father suddenly dies, and Britt inherits his newspaper business.

If the movie were in earnest, "Green Hornet" would take seriously the son's ultimate embrace of his father's crusading ideals, and Britt's complementary sideline as a nocturnal crime-fighting superhero (Christoph Waltz is Chudnofsky, the Russian mobster du jour).

But Gondry's "Green Hornet" does not have a serious bone in his body. Its goal is to satirize superhero motifs - mainly, the idea of the ethnic sidekick.

In "Green Hornet," Reid's Chinese sidekick Kato (Taiwanese singing star Jay Chou) is both the brains and brawn of the crime-fighting partnership. He builds all of the nifty hardware, beats up all of the bad guys and only when he's finished does dweeby Britt walk on to deliver a coup de grace kick to the nuts. And a one-liner.

Kato is even the most virile - when Britt acquires a foxy new office assistant (Cameron Diaz), it's Kato she asks to dinner.

This kicks off a romantic rivalry that leads to the movie's biggest misstep. "Hornet" devotes an hour to a buddy movie falling out that's never believable to begin with.

On the other hand, it does inspire an extended Kato-Britt brawl that appears to be an homage to Blake Edwards and the "Pink Panther" series - Clouseau, of course, was the original incompetent leading man.

But what does all this add up to besides an extended skit, one that spreads a half dozen laughs over a long two hours? (As when Chudnofsky starts killing anyone wearing green, including a Packers fan.)

You could argue the movie is a parable of Chinese ascendancy, as Asian efficiency and competence push aside America's end-of-an-empire decadence and indulgence - if that's true, you can understand why it's not featured in the marketing campaign.

One sign that the end is near: We stop believing in our superheroes and start smirking at them.

Another: The things we produce are never improved, merely repackaged for markup. Like, say, 3D movies.