The Green Lantern

With the unavoidable advent of Marvel's trump card (The Avengers), DC Comics needs another big hit like Batman: The Dark Knight if they want any chance to still be taken seriously in the current comic book film adaptation war. But the next Batman movie is still a bit away, so what weird and wonderful hero do we get treated to in the interim? Enter The Green Lantern, probably one of the most misunderstood DC superheroes ever. 

Green Lantern has a few things going for it: Firstly, a strong cast of well-known Hollywood lovelies, like Ryan Reynolds (The proposal, Waiting, Adventureland) and Blake Liveley (The Town, The Sisterhood of the travelling pants), secondly some fantastic samples of CGI wowness and thirdly, an alien world where basically anything is possible.

When you however compare it to Marvel's counterpart otherworldly comic, Thor, the film's blemishes just become a bit more apparent. The first most noticeable problem is with the villain, whom is really hard to take seriously with his hilariously ugly features and quite apparent lack of ability to instill fear in his enemies. This fact becomes painfully ironic in the light of the film's willpower vs. Fear plotline, which bring me to the second serious flaw:

"The first most noticeable problem is with the villain, whom is really hard to take seriously with his hilariously ugly features and quite apparent lack of ability to instill fear in his enemies."

While the film's plot might sound fine on paper, it just doesn't seem to really take flight ever. Sure, I can handle an alien menace that consumes fear as its energy, but once this allegory is generalized to relate to the entire film, you're going to find it difficult to take all the corniness seriously.

The film also feels a bit out of balance when it comes to the amount of focus shared between the two worlds. To be honest, the alien world seems much more exciting than the silly earth world, but sadly we only get a few sneak peeks of this weirdly wonderful foreign realm. The benefit however is that the film spends a lot more time on the development of the relationship between the two human earth leads, resulting in an average degree of emotional attachment. 

Even with these few cracks in the Lantern, the film is a great night out, with some really funny moments, fantastic action sequences and a fair amount of delicious multi-gender eye candy.

Highlight: A terrifying aerial opening scene sets the mood for the thrilling trip you are about to undergo.

Alien breath is the least of Ryan Reynolds' problems in this action-fest.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Meerkat Tails