This Lantern is hardly minty fresh

GREEN LANTERN (2011)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

Maybe it is stiff competition but 2011 brought two Marvel superheroes to the screen with blazing energy and colorful fun, those two being Thor and Captain America. That same year, DC Comics brought to the screen "Green Lantern," a convoluted misfire with a few tricks up its sleeve but with little of the pizazz and personality of its Marvel competition.

Ryan Reynolds is an ace fighter pilot, Hal Jordan, who has bad memories of his own father, a fighter pilot who lost control of one his planes and died in an explosion. Hal is supposed to be testing these new fighter planes and ejects himself before letting one explode (those planes are damn expensive). His on/off again girlfriend, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), vice president of Ferris Aircraft, is upset by his inability to fly one of these planes and to let go of his past trauma. That is until Hal tries to rescue a crash-landed alien craft carrying one of the Green Lanterns from the planet Oa, who gives him the ring that will make Hal into a Lantern. This is no easy task - Hal trains to gain control of the ring which can conjure up anything he can imagine as a weapon. He better have a good imagination when he confronts the Parallax, a giant piece of the Nothing that consumes the lifeforce of everything, I gather, and destroys everything in its path with its various tentacles.

"Green Lantern" is a goofball comic-strip picture, short on logic and coherence, long on Hal's quips and elaborate action scenes. It is barely distinguishable from any other comic-book movie out there with the exception of the accent on the color green.  I have always liked Green Lantern from the comics but I gather this is one movie we did not need - it feels like a flavorless supersonic version of "The Matrix."  It is also another one of those movies where the laws of physics are grossly exaggerated, and where a human like Hal can be tossed from one room or wide open space to another without ever breaking a bone. I can handle that when it comes to a god like Thor or the Hulk or Spider-Man, but this Lantern seems impervious to any injury.

The Parallax is a fascinating looking monster - a former Guardian of the Universe who was exposed to the yellow energy of the fear. I wanted to see more of it rather than the painfully overwrought and uneven performance by Peter Sarsgaard who becomes an Elephant Man of sorts (with all due respect to John Merrick) after being exposed to the Parallax. Sarsgaard's character is a most unworthy villain when we learn little of his purpose or reasoning of trying to defeat Hal, other than being Carol's ex.

Ryan Reynolds is the right actor for the role, bringing it a level of exuberance and wit I had not seen from him before. But the movie directed by Martin Campbell (who made the roughest, toughest James Bond film in eons, "Casino Royale") exerts little patience for any real development of a story - his direction and Stuart Baird's editing zigzag all over the map from one situation and plot contrivance to another. I never got caught up in anything the Lantern(s) had to do except their mission - to destroy a giant gray cloud with spider legs. Not very momentous.