Green Lantern: Brown Bag of Dog Crap.

I saw Green Lantern last night. It’s a bad movie. Like, real bad. I hold the unfortunate culpability of dragging along my girlfriend and another couple to the theater, and costing them hard earned bucks. Despite what you may think, I at even mid-week I still held out hope that this movie would be passable. To the point of inviting other people alone. By Friday afternoon I knew that I was in fact an asshole. By Friday evening after the movie I felt a certain sense of guilty.

This movie fucking stunk. This shit stank with the power of a thousand dog craps baked in the muggy Boston air.

For those of you who intelligently pointed out a while ago that it was going to suck, I tip my cap. Should have listened.

It’s difficult to start reviewing this quivering pile of CGI excrement. The movie suffers a fucking systematic failure, each facet of film failing and then giving way to the next groaning monstrosity. The script, acting and directing all come together to deliver what is the worst superhero movie I’ve seen in years. This is with the caveat that I wasn’t dumb enough to see X-Men: Wolverine: Origins: Jackman’s payday. Perhaps the most remarkable and praiseworthy thing about the flick is how all the various areas were committed to fucking sucking. They were unified in their terribleosity. A hand-holding debacle and slight on my girlfriend’s debit card. Thank Christ that Green Lantern isn’t a favorite character of mine. Praise Allah I wasn’t waiting for Hal Jordan to hit the silver screen.

The movie rots from the script down. There’s too much going on from the get-go, and that results in everything happening too quickly and without much purpose. The movie had the fucking audacity to claim it was DC’s “Star Wars”, and yet it didn’t seem to learn anything from the OG Lucas’ swag. Movie opens. They’re in Oa or some shit. Okay, cool. Then they cut to Hal Jordan. The problem is that Hal Jordan isn’t given the appropriate amount of screen time to build a rapport with him. Do you remember what happens at the beginning of A New Hope? They give you shit on the galactic tip with Vader’s boarding, and then they focus on Luke for a good while. You build a bond with Skywalker, you give a fuck about him. Sure, maybe he’s the whiniest motherfucker in the galaxy, but lay off. His Dad is Samurai Hitler.

Green Lantern never does that. It goes from Oa, to Hal Jordan, to Oa, to Hal Jordan, to Oa, to Hal Jordan for the beginning of the flick. And because of that, all the Hal Jordan moments are overwrought and hilariously trite. As Hal Jordan is flying a plane, he has a panic attack thinking of his Dad crashing and blowing the fuck up. This is so you know HAL JORDAN HAS FEAR. Why has this skilled pilot never fucking had a panic attack before? This is after you get him waking up next to a babe – he’s a player! – and driving real fast – he’s a bad ass! There isn’t enough time given to Jordan, and they never flesh him out. Instead he’s a two-dimensional pile of drivel.

This is all before they introduce Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond. A quirky dildo-breath who is somehow both a genius and a high school teacher. From there on in the already erratic and packed script gets even more bloated. I can describe the movie to you as follows:

We’re on OA! Oh shit Sinestro is giving some banal speech!

Cut!

Now we’re with Hal Jordan. He’s being all emo and shit and doesn’t want to be a Lantern. Reluctant Hero origin story for the 9,000th time! More poorly done than ever.

Cut!

Now we’re with Hector Hammond. He’s like Hal, but not! He’s totally filled – infected mind you – with the desire to use fear! Watch as he succumbs to the evil within!

Cut!

Sinestro is begging a bunch of annoying computer-generated douchebags in a space-ceiling’d Jedi Temple to help.

Cut!, Cut!, Cut!

For some reason the film is desperate to build the Jordan/Hammond dichotomy. It never works because as I said nothing is developed. They throw in lazy references. They’re both in love with Carol Ferris. Why? How? Where’s the backstory? It isn’t there. There’s no showing in the movie, just telling. “We did this together, blah blah blah.” Cut back and forth, back and forth. Forever. Into infinity. Perhaps the actors sensed they were fucked from the script-go, because they all mailed in their performances. Some of them capable actors, some of them Blake Lively.

It was obvious from the promotional material they mistakingly let out with Lively in it that she was under heavy-sedation during the filming of the movie. Her flawless performance in The Town must have been method acting, she must have indulged in hard opiates during the filming and couldn’t shake them before being cast. Or maybe she doesn’t have an autonomic nervous system, and she’s constantly having to control her breath and heartbeat.

Speaking of being cast, who the fuck did the casting for this flick? I want to know the blow job who said “We need an Executive of a company who is also a fighter pilot….Blake Lively!”

What a fucking asshole.

That casting almost makes Ryan Reynolds seem deec. I personally think Reynolds can act, but he was given such a flat character that he didn’t much to work with. When you’re vomiting stereotypes and exposition for an entire movie, you’re going to suck. In fact, it’s a bit depressing that the movie is at its brief best when Reynolds falls back into his tired schtick and is allowed to cut a couple of insultingly easy Van Wilder-esque quips.

He’ll be a good Deadpool, he sucks as Jordan.

Reynolds haters? This is going to be an underhand pitch to you. Crank that shit.

The rest of the actors and actresses mail it in as well. Peter Sarsgaard is abysmal, and hopefully he got a decent enough check to compensate for being in the movie. There’s a moment when he’s having his coming out party as a bad guy and he’s roaring and screaming like a complete asshole. My girlfriend burst out laughing, and I laughed too. What was supposed to be a frightening moment was a dude with a swollen cockhead for a skull screeching in a poorly framed shot. He looked like an enormous caterwauling fuck.

Almost every emotional moment in the flick misses it’s beat. Some of it is the directing. Really, Martin Campbell? You thought framing Sarsgaard so he looked like a menacing Veined Penis Tip and approving of him screaming like an In-Progress-Nana-Rape was a good call? Some of it is the acting. Having Blake Lively try and stir up emotion is impossible. Some of it is the script. How can we care about these characters if none of them are given a decent amount of screen time? Some of it is the special effects. How can I take Ryan Reynolds seriously as he professes his emo love, when he’s essentially a floating head? The suit looks like ass, and when you have a close-up of his head, it looks like his neck has been slathered with green paint.

As I said, the movie is a systematic failure. At least to me. When Rendar asked me how the movie was, I shook my head. It sucks, it sucks bad. I told him not to see it, and that’s almost unfathomable for me. We recommend each other dreck all the time. I don’t have high standards. There isn’t anything to hang your hat on with this flick, save for the hope that it may not get a sequel. It probably will though. Pieces of shit like me went to see it, despite the poor reviews. Fueling the machine. I justified it by wanting to crap out a review of the summer schlock, but I feel like a petulant asshole for having approved of the film with my greenbacks.

Don’t see this movie.