After having written what some considered to be a tone-deaf, doesn’t-wanna-get-it pan of X-Men: First Class, L.A. Weekly critic Karina Longworth has now slapped down Martin Campbell‘s The Green Lantern (Warner Bros., 6.17). Not that Longworth isn’t “right” — the across-the-board word is that this $300 million dollar film stinks — but she’s now presumed to be semi-unreceptive to this kind of film going in.
The Green Lantern “never bothers to suggest that [character and plot elements] really matter,” she laments. “Campbell’s ADD style privileges spectacle over story — so much so that the film never rewards the viewer for even trying to keep track of what is going on.
“So you give up, and instead try to grab on to the small pleasures, which momentarily distract from the fact that the narrative is nonsensical, the characters so boilerplate that their every action seem preordained from the earliest frames, even as the action on-screen is often incoherent.”
I love this passage: “While Ryan Reynolds isn’t a sharp enough actor to really find the crackle in his standard-issue superhero wisecracks, his body is a marvel of precision sculpting. As he breathes in and out in the skin-tight, digitally enhanced Lantern suit, each abdominal muscle seems to pulse independently. It’s transfixing — and the closest Green Lantern gets to character detail.”