Green Lantern

GREEN LANTERN (2011) - June 23, 2011
Meh.  A mediocre superhero origin story about Hal Jordan and his transformation into a Green Lantern.  The film is decently directed by Martin Campbell, and it starts and ends fairly well.  But the whole midsection (essentially all of Hal Jordan's transformation into a Green Lantern) was just kind of dull.  It doesn't help that the character, despite the best efforts of a typically charismatic Ryan Reynolds, is pretty bland, and his whole arc (he starts out cocky and irresponsible and ends up... do I seriously need to finish that sentence?) is super generic.  The movie also introduces some father issues for Jordan (a superhero with father issues?  Never!) but doesn't really go anywhere with it.  The villains -- a too-subdued Peter Sarsgaard and a giant, angry cloud of pure fear -- don't fare much better.  Another problem with the midsection is that all the stuff on the homeworld of the lanterns falls a bit flat -- this stuff should have been infused with a sense of awe and wonder, and instead just feels like generic CGI overload.  I don't know.  The movie wasn't all bad, I guess -- I liked Reynolds, and the action was mostly pretty solid -- it was just aggressively mediocre.  **