But 99.5 percent of terrible movies are just … terrible. That’s especially evident with the following five features, a quintet which cost millions to produce and yielded very little in return.

Dishonorable mentions include “The Change Up,” “Green Lantern,” “Larry Crowne,” “Sucker Punch” and “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy.” But these five movies went above and beyond the call of duty in draining precious hours from our lives.

1. “Just Go With It” – Wow. Just wow. The laziest comedy in who knows how long wastes not only the talents of stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston but also bit players Nicole Kidman and Dave Matthews. Sandler can challenge us (“Punch Drunk Love”), make us smile (“The Wedding Singer”) and even give us some grand guilty pleasures (“You Don’t Mess with the Zohan”). But with this sorry remake of “Cactus Flower” shows he can arrive on a movie set, recite dialogue less thought out than a Mad Libs sheet and call it a day without doing some rigorous soul searching.
2. “Dylan Dog: Dead of Night” – Insert your own Superman crashes back to Earth gag here. Poor Brandon Routh received precious little career buzz from his underrated work in the 2006 Man of Steel reboot. Five years later, he’s reduced to starring in this wannabe horror comedy about an undead hunter trying to … well, is there any point reciting such a sorry excuse for a plot?
3. “Your Highness” – Danny McBride is not a movie star, James Franco isn’t the next Steve Martin and Natalie Portman should know better than to appear in a fifth-rate “Monty Python” sketch stretched beyond the breaking point. Best suited for teenage boys jazzed to see their first R-rated movie no matter how painful the experience may be.
4. “The Human Centipede – Full Sequence” – “Fear Factor” contestants should be forced to watch this on an IMAX screen. Every criticism unfairly lobbed at the first “Centipede” hits the mark in this gross and mindless affair. The concept – a “Centipede” fan wants to emulate his favorite movie – might have worked had writer/director Tom Six not decided to eschew the storytelling prowess he flashed in the grisly original.
5. “Apollo 18” – It’s amazing how many scares Hollywood has wrung out of the found footage genre, from “The Blair Witch Project” to three chilling “Paranormal Activity” films. That means we were bound to endure a mega-bomb like this outer space claptrap.

* Note: My schedule did not allow me to view other potential clunkers like “Jack and Jill,” “Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star” and “Dream House.”

I was wrong.

And I’m sorry.

The first chapter of how primates inevitably take over the planet and dominate man is far from a classic, but at 110 minutes, the story is briskly told, told well, and satisfying. Director Rupert Wyatt’s direction of the action scenes is first rate, and the screenplay offers up a perfectly plausible scenario that explains how a PETA wet dream might come true.

James Franco plays it straight as Will Rodman, a researcher for the San Francisco-based Gen-Sys, one of those evil pharmaceutical companies that puts profits above all else. But because Will wears a Berkeley t-shirt, we know he’s a good guy interested only in serving humanity. Actually, what drives Will is the fate of his father (the always welcome John Lithgow), who’s slowly disappearing due to the uncompromising ravages of Alzheimer’s. Will’s aggressively working on a cure and is now ready to try human testing with a new virus-based serum he’s developed.

Primates are an important part of the serum’s trial experiments, where the idea is to repair and rejuvenate the brain. The good and bad news is that an increased intelligence is a noticeable result in the apes injected with the drug. Inevitably, something goes horribly wrong, which results in Will taking a baby chimp home to save it from being put down. The chimp is Caesar (brought to life by an impressive motion capture performance from Andy Serkis) and before long, Caesar becomes the rambunctious baby of the house.

Caesar, however, is also uncommonly smart and self-aware, and what Will discovers is that the serum given to Caesar’s mother affected him in the womb. This realization leads Will into another series of well-intentioned experiments that result in a horrible series of unintended consequences.

Because we already know the inevitable outcome, as is the case with most well-crafted prequels, the fun comes from watching how it happens, and in that respect the story is seamless and imaginative. Politically, the themes are in keeping with the original franchise: pro-animal rights and anti-human, with a little drug company bashing to boot. Nothing is overt and in your face, though, so this is far from an obnoxious message film.

What’s most impressive is how the narrative takes its time in developing the Caesar character. At heart, “Rise” is the story of the events that created an intelligent, embittered, and savvy revolutionary who would eventually take over the world. Moreover, on paper, the idea of CGI’d apes running loose in Frisco doing battle with the police sounded  positively cheesy, but somehow it works.

Some of you might recall that the fourth film in the original franchise also told this story.  The J. Lee Thompson (working miracles with no budget) directed “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes” (1972) brilliantly used what had occurred in the previous films to explain the evolution of apes from slaves to slavemaster. But other than the “rise,” the two films have absolutely nothing in common.

Written by the married team of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, “Rise” is a little too simplistic in spots: the angry neighbor, the corporate malfeasance, the animal abuse at the shelter Caesar eventually finds himself in. But none of that changes the fact that the movie sure is entertaining.

The CGI does look a little fake, though.

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes’” is available today at Amazon.

Fellow actor Seth Rogen is sticking up for his “Pineapple Express” co-star, albeit belatedly.

Rogen, most recently seen in “50/50,” contends it’s the producers’ fault when an Oscar host stumbles. And, in the case of Franco’s ill-fated pairing with Anne Hathaway last year, no one could have saved the show from itself, according to comments from Rogen published at MovieLine:

I think when you agree to do something like that, you put a certain amount of faith in the institution, hoping that they’ll take care of you, and I feel like they didn’t [take care of him]. Why hire James Franco and then give him Billy Crystal’s monologue? It was like, “Oh, we’ll hire these young hosts and then we’ll just do the same sh*t we do every f*cking year.” Which to me was really odd. I think they just approached it wrong. They didn’t think it through, and they were way underprepared. I think they hung him out to dry. So I wouldn’t do it unless they hired some better writers [laughs].

Rogen deserves credit for sticking up for a pal, but his logic is ultimately flawed.

Oscar hosts are given a set amount of material they likely can’t change, but they still are responsible for creating a sense of comfort and ease. Billy Crystal isn’t the best Oscar host in recent memory because of his killer punch lines. He’s great because he lets us know he’ll be there to guide us through the long, and often torturous, ceremony. We’re in good hands with Crystal, period.

Franco looked alternately bored and bemused, and that’s hardly the best way to approach the gig.

Most importantly, if Franco didn’t think he could work within the Oscar format he should have politely declined the gig. After all, the actor is pretty busy these days and is hardly wanting for work.

And so it was that I regarded seeing the new “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” about as much as I look forward to seeing torture-porn or Merchant-Ivory costume dramas. Meaning, I thought I’d rather have my eyeballs plucked out.

But every once in a long while, Hollywood still harbors the capacity to surprise me. And it’s with an utterly stunned sense of joy that I am happy to declare “Rise” the most entertaining movie of the summer, a film that is jam-packed with moments that will awe and inspire both young and old alike.  It will have you thinking, “how’d they do that?” over and over.

The film stars Oscar nominee James Franco (“127 Hours”) as Will Rodman, a young science whiz who’s at the forefront of testing a new Alzheimer’s-fighting drug, AZ-112, on apes at a genetic research firm called GenSys. Franco’s presence serves notice that this film is going to be smarter than usual. While he occasionally misfires, like he did in “Your Highness,” his choice of films is usually tied to great writing.

And that is the case here. Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver spool out the scientific info with a minimum of confusing jargon while quickly establishing Rodman as a full-bodied, sympathetic character whose father (John Lithgow) is slipping away into the ether of Alzheimer’s disease.

Lithgow’s role is relatively small but he makes the most of it with one of his most affecting and effective film roles in quite some time. And Andy Serkis, known for bringing an astonishing humanity to the facial expressions of CGI-based characters like Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” films and King Kong in the Peter Jackson remake a few years back, outdoes himself here by bringing heartbreaking emotional depth to the main ape, named Caesar.

When the top ape in GenSys’s initial experiment goes, well, ape, just before the board meeting that will approve the beneficial effects of use of the drug on humans, the program is immediately canceled and the dozen apes involved in it are killed. But one baby chimp, Caesar, has been overlooked, and another researcher convinces Rodman to take the animal home and save it from extermination.

As Caesar grows, it’s clear that his intelligence far exceeds that of humans at parallel ages. Rodman realizes that the animal has developed these remarkable traits as a byproduct of the AZ-112 given to his mother and decides to use the drug on his father, who after the treatment appears to heal immediately. Success in improving his father’s condition inspires Rodman and his boss Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) to launch a new, even more secret round of tests. Only this time, both the good and the bad results of their high-risk experiments are vastly heightened.

To spoil another moment of “Rise” would be a crime. Suffice to say, what follows is brilliantly planned and expertly paced jaw-dropping fun rivaled only by “Fast Five” for the craziest two hours of film this year.

And as an aside to those readers who are wondering if “Apes” hides any sucker punches against capitalism or towards an overly biased take against animal experimentation, another prominent conservative site’s head critic was at the screening I attended and he expressed his surprise that the film wasn’t polticized and that the sympathetic and heroic Franco character more than compensated for any risk of mustache-twirling villainy by the other scientists.

—–

Serkis is the best reason to see the movie. Playing the lead ape beneath a seductively persuasive digital simian overlay, he conveys exuberance, disappointment, despair and menace with all the emotional shadowing that might normally be expected of an actor unencumbered by computer tracking. It’s a wondrous accomplishment.

The serviceable script, by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, starts with genetic researcher Will Rodman (James Franco) conducting experiments with a new serum that has shown promise of being a cure for Alzheimer’s—the dementia with which Will’s father (John Lithgow) happens to be afflicted. The testing program is being funded by a genetics outfit run by a standard corporate greedhead named Jacobs (David Oyelowo). The test subjects, of course, are chimpanzees. The experiments go well until something awful happens, as you know it must, and Jacobs orders all of the test chimps destroyed. But a kindly chimp minder (Tyler Labine) saves one of the animals—a newborn—and gives it to Will for safekeeping. Will takes the hairy tyke home and names it Caesar (played by Serkis even at this childlike stage of the character’s development).

The story advances with some invention, if little in the way of real surprise. We see that Caesar has inherited serum-heightened brain function from his late test-chimp mother. He becomes adept at sign language, among other things. Meanwhile, Will is administering the serum to his dad, and it works wonders—for a while. Then something else awful happens, and Will is forced to turn Caesar in to an animal pound which apparently specializes in apes. The place is a dank, oppressive prison, overseen by a sadistic warder named Dodge (Tom Felton, deploying the same malevolent sneer he used as Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films). Dodge addresses his miserable charges with lines like “stupid monkey” and “you damn dirty ape,” and we very soon feel a jailbreak coming on.

Read full review here.

What’s to Like

As a fan of James Franco, I’m usually interested in seeing him onscreen. He’s made some interesting choices in his career so I’m curious to see why he would sign up for this sci-fi prequel. Hopefully, his role is more interesting than the bland character seen in the trailer spouting cliches. In terms of the visual effects, I’m impressed by the image of the man with two floors of apes rising above him.

What’s to Dislike

Everything else. I don’t think that anyone is clamoring for another “Planet of the Apes” movie and if they were, this one doesn’t look too impressive. The apes just look like smaller versions of Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” and the ape sequences don’t look that exciting. The shot of an ape jumping into the helicopter is particularly unimpressive.

The Verdict

I’m not really looking forward to this one. If the trailer is the best that the movie can offer, it might be viewers who are cursing the apes, not Charlton Heston.

Release Date: August 5,2011

The problems with last night’s show were legion, and much of the media agrees that what we might’ve witnessed could well rate as the worst  Oscar telecast ever.  My memory isn’t good enough to say that for sure, but that the show was dreadful isn’t in dispute and while a post-mortem isn’t what this write-up is about, I will say that James Franco’s arrogant, sleepy, cooler-than-thou attitude that forced the usually delightful Anne Hathaway to over-compensate with the cute factor, was only half the problem. The other half was in the producing (and writing). This was a horribly produced three-plus hours. But rather than complain further, I’m going to offer constructive suggestions. No one cares what I think. I get that. But I’m going to offer them anyway.

1. The Host

The host is crucial, not only to the success of the overall show but also to the ratings. The cynical grab of Franco and Hathaway in an effort to attract younger voters was beyond stupid. Neither is a standalone box office draw, neither has captured America’s imagination, and both are inter-changeable as a dozen or so other actors in that same age range. I hate to tell Hollywood this, but (and the ratings back me up) young people aren’t stupid. They really don’t want to “watch people their own age” host the Oscars. Like the rest of us, they want to watch a good show. Upon hearing Franco and Hathaway were hosting this year, even the squealiest of teenagers was likely as confused  by that choice as the rest of us.

There’s two ways to go with a host.

 You make the Oscar telecast the host’s show —  The Billy Crystal Show or the The Johnny Carson Show or The Whoever Show. Whoever the host is, the Oscars should become their program. When Johnny Carson or Crystal hosted, our affection for them was one of the main reasons we tuned in and kept watching. We couldn’t wait for them to return to the podium between awards and quip on what just happened or extend a running joke. Now it seems as though we have a host for the first half hour before the program dissolves into a structure-less hodgepodge of famous faces and various awards. It actually feels more and more out of place when the hosts appear closer to the end of the show.  

Or…

Find an Ed Sullivan to take us through the evening. Instead of a bad variety show with truly awful comedy writing and musical numbers, have a steady, warm, familiar, charismatic figure glide us through the evening. Ed Sullivan wasn’t an entertainer and yet Americans young and old tuned in because Americans young and old liked Ed. Rather than demand our host perform (and risk the ever-increasing likelihood of a flop), have him or her serve as our guide for the night, walking us through the various awards. Morgan Freeman would be perfect for this. America loves him, he’s classy,  has a wry sense of humor, a warm presence, and who wouldn’t want to spend a few hours with Morgan Freeman?

How about TCM’s Robert Osbourne? Or Ellen Degeneres?

2. Structure

A well-structured show that actually feels like it’s building towards something will solve a ton of problems. There might well be some sort of structure in place now, but we in the audience can’t sense or feel it. As it stands now, the show feels episodic, messy and plodding. There’s no rhyme or reason as to how the three-plus hours unfold: a big award! an obscure award! a song! Celine Dion sings for the dead! What the hell is that about? Structure is KEY to making a successful film or television show, to telling any kind of story, and someone needs to grab all the disparate elements involved in the yearly Oscar giveaway and turn them into a cohesive whole that gives the audience a sense of momentum.

3. Pacing

For years, and for good reason, people complained about the length of the telecast and the pacing. But from where I sit, the remedy applied to this problem has been exactly the wrong one. Speeches are truncated, songs are shortened, and the show feels hurried in too many places. Cutting and trimming is not an instant cure for pacing. “Gone With the Wind” is nearly four hours long but if you cut an hour out of it, you’ll hurt the pacing because the story is so well-told and perfectly — here comes that word again — structured.

The Academy Awards don’t lag because the show is too long, the Academy Awards lag because the show sucks. Stop worrying about time and worry more about compartmentalizing each segment of the telecast and making them better. Last night no one spoke longer than Kirk Douglas and yet no one was bored. We couldn’t get enough of him. He was charming and funny and we adore the guy. I would’ve also liked to have seen a longer and more dignified tribute to Lena Horne. With an eye towards allowing the audience to make an emotional connection to Ms. Horne, to miss her and appreciate her and feel the loss of this great talent — as opposed to rushing Halle Berry off the stage — the moment could’ve been a truly memorable one.

Shorter isn’t better. Better produced segments is better. Making each segment an individual gem is better. Lena Horne deserved a gem.  

4. Suspense

I’m not sure what the Academy can do about this but the biggest bummer, the biggest drag on the show every year, is a numbing lack of suspense. Who wins should not be a foregone conclusion, and this is a problem that only feels like it’s getting worse.  What we have now are favorites always emerging from the abundance of awards shows that come before the Oscars and an avalanche of media prognosticators in the entertainment press who know a lot of people in Hollywood and can get the lay of the land as far as who’s voting for whom.

Sitting through a poorly paced, poorly structured show awaiting the inevitable is never fun.

Maybe people just need to shut up about who they’re voting for?

5. Watch the Super Bowl

Year after year, ratings for the Super Bowl embarrass the Academy Awards. Over 100 million people tune in to watch a game involving teams other than their own. There’s a reason for this. Watch and figure out what that reason is. Structure and suspense certainly helps, but there’s more to it than that. People love football. People love the movies. The Academy Awards shouldn’t get less than half the viewership the Super Bowl does. Crack that code.

6. Create Traditions

What the Oscars need most are a few traditions, four or five can’t-miss annual events that we can count on during each and every telecast. The Super Bowl is brilliant at this, from their opening reading of the Declaration of Independence to the big deal made out of the half-time show to the awarding of the Lombardi Trophy. Create some beloved traditions and your audience will come.

Perhaps…

7. More Magic Through the Use of Nostalgia

Hollywood needs to honor its past more. Right now that happens during the program in spots, but again the structure is such a mess and the pace so hurried that these moments always feel shoehorned and  perfunctory — like the Academy can’t wait to get them out of the way. Slow down! Take us back, move us, make us cry, remind us why we fell in love with the movies in the first place. Last night, one of the most memorable moments was simply hearing the “Star Wars” theme. But again, by the time I turned my head to watch it was over.

Furthermore, and no one wants to admit this, it’s just a fact that today’s movie stars are lacking in all the qualities that made The Greats great. There’s a reason a 95 year-old Kirk Douglas can steal the show and the sight of a digital Bob Hope puts a smile on our face James Franco never could. The Academy can make up for the lack of star-power today and our lack of affection for most of today’s stars by mining the rich legacy of their past.

8. A Smart Producer

The Oscars need a producer familiar with taking nothing and creating a story or at least a crafting some sort of narrative with some kind of momentum. Reality show producer Mark Burnett would be an excellent choice. His entire career has been built around crafting narratives and a sense of momentum from practically nothing. I appreciate that you want “A SHOW!” so let Burnett be the Executive Producer who crafts the structure and let him hire the Bob Fosse needed to bring the pizazz.

9. Bring Back Billy Crystal

Just do it already.

10. Start with Class and Stop Thinking Outside the Box

Go back and watch the best reviewed and most beloved telecasts.

Rinse, wash, repeat…

The world hasn’t changed all that much. You have.

Best Actress:

Will Win: Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”

Should Win: Annette Bening, “The Kids are All Right”

This is the category where I am hoping for the biggest upset. Portman has the momentum but I found both her performance and the film to be disappointing. The plot of “Black Swan” was over-the-top and over-dramatic and the film doesn’t deserve the recognition that it’s been receiving. On the other hand, Annette Bening was in complete control of her character in “The Kids are All Right” and played the part of a woman trying to hold her family together wonderfully. Let’s hope that the Academy agrees and hands Bening her first Oscar.

Best Actor:

Will Win: Colin Firth, “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: James Franco, “127 Hours”

There is no doubt that Firth delivers a strong performance in “The King’s Speech.” However, I prefer Franco’s performance as an athlete with his arm trapped underneath a boulder. In approximately an hour and a half, Franco plays a man facing death who must find a way to save his own life. “127 Hours” would have failed if it wasn’t for Franco’s strong performance and Danny Boyle’s great directing. The two of them made this movie succeed and Franco, who will be co-hosting the Oscars, deserves to walk home with an award for it.

Best Supporting Actress:

Will Win: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”

Should Win: Melissa Leo, “The Fighter”

“The Fighter” was an actor’s movie and there are two brilliant performances in it. Leo and her onscreen son Christian Bale should both be walking out of the theater with Oscars in hand. In “The Fighter,” Leo shines as an overbearing mother who is trying to manage her son’s boxing career. It’s a wonderful role and Leo excels in it. The Academy Awards often applaud big performances and this year will be no different.

Best Supporting Actor:

Will Win: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”

Should Win: Christian Bale, “The Fighter”

Of the four main acting categories, this one is the easiest bet. As a drug-addicted former boxer trying to reclaim his glory, Bale delivered the second great performance on display in “The Fighter.” In recent years, Bale has been known for playing the straight-laced Bruce Wayne in the Batman movies. In this movie, Bale gets a chance to cut loose and go for broke in a scene-stealing supporting role. Like Heath Ledger did in “The Dark Knight,” Bale overshadows the main character in a great performance that will likely be rewarded.

Best Director:

Will Win: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: Tom Hooper, “The King’s Speech”

Although other critics predict that David Fincher will win best director for his role behind the scenes of “The Social Network,” I think that Hooper has the momentum going for him, especially with his recent DGA award. Personally, I loved “The Social Network” more than “The King’s Speech,” but the directing stood out more in the latter picture. Hooper uses his directing to add a new element to the story. By focusing on open spaces, Hooper brought attention to the importance of the King of England being able to speak across the airwaves to his fellow countrymen and should receive an Oscar for it.

Best Picture:

Will Win: “The King’s Speech”

Should Win: “Toy Story 3”

It’s unfortunate to think that “Toy Story 3” isn’t even really contending in this category. With the assumption that “Toy Story 3” will win in the animated feature film category,  it looks like the voters will ultimately choose something else as best picture. Most of the other contenders in this category (excluding “Black Swan” and “Winter’s Bone”) deserve to be here and “The King’s Speech” is a strong choice for best picture. However, the best picture of the year was undoubtedly “Toy Story 3″ and its producers should be walking away with an award that says so at the end of the night.

Other than “Shallow Grave,” “Trainspotting” and the first two-thirds of “28 Days Later,” I have always felt something missing from Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’s work. His eclectic ability to move in and out of different genres and how he continues to push himself as a vibrant visualist continues to impress, but there’s something about his later work, including the Academy Award-winning “Slumdog Millionaire,” lacking in that all-important element that stays with you once the lights come up.  At their best, movies keep on keeping on as they pull and tug and find their own emotional home in the human soul. Boyle’s simply don’t, and there’s so much right about “127 Hours,” so many impressive pieces, and yet as a whole, this true story of a young man forced to make an awful choice is, in the end, something completely forgettable.

Based on an incredible 127 hours in the life of  Aron Ralston (James Franco), an adrenaline junkie who ends up paying for his solitary ways after he finds his arm wedged between a canyon wall and a boulder while canyoneering alone in the Utah desert, Boyle pulls every trick in the book and invents some new ones in order to turn into cinema what is essentially a one location, one actor drama. Flashbacks that piece together both the practical and emotional reasons that brought Ralston to this perilous situation combined with vivid hallucinations driven by days of exposure, thirst, and hunger, gives a television movie concept a rightful place on the big screen.

Emotionally, “127 Hours” commendably avoids melodrama by focusing on that part of the human condition most of us can relate to. Ralston isn’t a bad person buried by crushing regrets, but once he’s forced to spend a number of harrowing days facing his own mortality and who he is as a person, he awakens to the fact that he could be a better man. Up until now, he’s led the life of someone determined to avoid the emotional entanglements that come with personal relationships. Footloose and fancy-free is Ralston’s motto and the endless solitude of a barren and beautiful desert is his spiritual home. In small ways we’re all guilty of, he pushes people away, good people like his parents who want and deserve a place in his life. But now that he’s dying, those slights that seemed so small at the time, like not returning his mother’s phone call, now carry a weight of regret they wouldn’t to a man with his whole life in front of him.

Franco is good as Ralston, especially in the early-going gonzo stuff. But once the second act begins and he’s the whole show for the remaining 80 minutes or so, he holds the screen and ably communicates the anguish of a character slowly but inevitably running out of life and faced with an unthinkable choice. For the one person who’s going to bitch in the comments about the lack of a spoiler alert involving a plot turn everyone’s aware of, let me just say that the final sequence is unnecessarily explicit, unwatchable, and feels as though it goes on forever.

The film’s central problem, though, remains the emotional-staying-power component. Personally I loved that Ralston’s regrets were — within the context of what we usually see on film — relatively small. Unlike, say, Will Smith’s overwrought “Seven Pounds,” the sins Ralston recounts in his life have nothing to do with something big, such as his thoughtlessness causing the death of another. Instead, what this young man realizes is that his sins involved the pushing away of others in ways both big and small. Obviously, the situation he ultimately finds himself in is part of a Karmic price paid for being such a loner, but the story takes that idea to a more universal place that reminded me of my priest’s definition of a sin: “Anything that harms a relationship, be it with a fellow human being or God.”

Unfortunately, everything is so slick, so professional, so showy and meant to dazzle that the beating heart of it all gets lost somewhere in the meticulous story structure and editing. “127 Hours” feel less like an emotional journey and more like a product. Pretty to look at but not something you’re going to take home with you.

—–

“The Green Hornet” tells the story of Britt Reid (Seth Rogen), a young playboy whose father James (Tom Wilkinson) runs a major newspaper. “Trying doesn’t matter when you always fail,” James advises Britt early in the story, so Britt stops trying and starts wasting his life. While James spends his time trying to fight corruption in his newspaper’s editorials, Britt spends his time partying and sleeping with beautiful women.

As the story continues, James dies suddenly and Britt decides to vandalize the statue erected for his father. He enlists the assistance of Kato (Jay Chou), a former employee of his father who has a knack for making a delicious cup of coffee. Kato is Britt’s seemingly only friend and the two work together to destroy the statue. Afterward, they witness a crime occurring and they confront a group of thieves. Kato starts fighting all of the members of the group and quickly knocks them to the ground.  

Kato, who had previously served as James’s mechanic, turns out to be a great fighter. In one of the movie’s most clichéd turns, Kato has amazing acrobatic abilities that Britt hadn’t been aware of previously. Kato comes from the lame school of sidekicks who are undervalued in their regular jobs but who are secretly amazing athletes who can fight gangs of people when given the opportunity. (I wonder if he puts that on his resume.)

Eventually, criminal mastermind Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz) watches as his crime empire begins to suffer with the Green Hornet and his sidekick in town. In typical villainous fashion, he vows to find the Green Hornet and kill him.

Since its release a few weeks ago, “The Green Hornet” has done well at the box office. Unfortunately, the story isn’t worth the film’s box office success.  Aside from the James Franco cameo, this story is one disappointment after another.

The entire movie feels like it’s been written by young fanboys wanting to make a movie about their favorite crime fighter. It comes as no surprise that the movie was written by Seth Rogen, the film’s star, and Evan Goldberg, who helped write “Superbad” and “Pineapple Express.” Rogen and Goldberg have written humorous stories, before but there are very few jokes in “The Green Hornet” that actually work. Added to that, the action sequences are over the top and unbelievable.

None of the characters are even interesting to watch, including Cameron Diaz who appears as Britt’s assistant. Even Christoph Waltz, who was so memorable in his Oscar-winning role as the villain in “Inglourious Basterds” has a  forgettable role  as a villain with self-confidence issues. I only wish that the arrogant villain played by Franco could have hung around longer and actually proved a challenging foe for the Green Hornet.

It should be noted that “The Green Hornet” is being released in 3D. The film features one enjoyable scene where the 3D effects are well-used but other than that, the effect is mostly wasted in this tiresome story.