douglas e riggs

Last weekend, amidst a thousand other bachelor party type activities, I somehow found myself in a cab and then, a movie theater. There was an emerald green space cop on the screen, one I’d read about before, in the funny pages. I like outer-space comics even though their settings are almost always underutilized. You can basically let your imagination run free, what with character/alien/alien worlds design as well as panel lay-out. Why so many are drawn staid and ‘normal’ I’ll never understand. That said, this was a movie.

One that was getting horrible reviews.

My expectations couldn’t have been lower. There was also a whiskey and ginger-ale in my hand as I placed the 3D glasses on my face and sat back in my VIP chair. As I said it was a bachelor party weekend and we were rollin’ while they be hatin’. I fully expected the booze to be the best part of the next 2 hours. The strange thing was, I actually enjoyed the Green Lantern.

Look, I get that the story must have been harvested from about 2 dozen screenwriters. That Ryan Reynolds is the smuggiest smug that ever smugged. That Blake Lively couldn’t act her way out of tissue-paper coffin. That the script played fast and loose with decades of rich space cop continuit(ies). That it was in 3D.

I enjoyed it anyways.

I enjoyed Mark Strong as Sinestro, one of the baddest-ass villains in DC’s whole canon. I loved Peter Sarsgaard as a hammy Hector Hammond. I loved Ryan Reynolds asshole take on Hal Jordan (newsflash critics, Hal is an arrogant jag. You are supposed think he’s a prick. Not that Reynolds need act much in this regard, but still. That’s called casting). I loved Lively in that business skirt that began up near her ribs and ended just past her hips. And the special effects weren’t terrible either.

Green Lantern was a whole lot of fun. It was head and shoulders better than some of the other comicbook dreck I’ve sat through. I’m looking at you X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Watchmen, Spiderman 3, and Daredevil. It’s heart was in the right place insomuch as it had need of one. It was all bombast and giant green Gatling guns and that was exactly what it was required to be.