Green Lantern Review

I went in going for a good fun diversion. Well, except for Ryan Reynolds (and all too brief appearances by Taika Waititi), I hated this movie. The script was awful & the direction was bad. I know it was an origin story but it was a leaden bore. Reynolds seemed to know when to take the story seriously and when not to, something the rest of the cast could have learned from. Angela Bassett was woefully under utilized. Peter Sarsgaard didn't know whether to be serious or hammy. And was I supposed to believe that Tim Robbin's character was old enough to be Sarsgaard's father?

Speaking of that, were Reynolds & Lively supposed to be the same age? If so, I didn't buy her as being in her late 20s, much less her early 30s. And Lively is as believable playing an ace pilot as I am playing Blake Lively. I thought Blake was overrated in The Town (which is an AWESOME movie by the way), so why is Hollywood trying to make her the big IT girl? Besides being pretty, what does she bring to a movie? And as for her recent scandal, Reese Witherspoon was spot on RIGHT at the MTV Movie Awards.

But this movie just wasn't fun. Iron Man and the X-Men movies showed you can have a superhero movie that is fun and knows it isn't making great art (the exceptions being the Batman movies made before Christopher Nolan took over). Superhero movies are bad when they start to take themselves too seriously (see Watchmen and the 3rd X-Men movie. The Christopher Nolan Batman movies are the exception). Ryan Reynolds looked ready to have fun, but wasn't able to let loose.

And then, about 10-15 minutes before the movie was over, a lady and 4-5 kids came in. I think they had bought tickets for the showing AFTER the one I was in. For some reason, she didn't realize the movie had started, much less was almost over. She was talking and herding her kids to their seats in a normal to loud volume, as if there was nothing wrong. Didn't she see the lights were off? Didn't she see the movie on the screen? Didn't she see what time it was? It was so close to the end, people really didn't do or say anything. I think they were ready for the movie to just be done.