"The Green Lantern"

2011 promises to be the Year of the Comic Book Movie, AKA The Year The Coolest Wife Ever Will Be Dragged to the Movies for Stuff She May Or May Not Like Just To Make Her Fanboy Husband Happy.

So far we've had "Thor", "The Green Lantern" and "X-Men First Class". Still to come: "Captain America" and "Cowboys vs. Aliens". Aside from "X-Men First Class", I plan to see all of them. As the wife of a Fanboy Geek, it is my solemn duty to attend such movies in support of my loving husband's dorkdom, and generally I have a good time doing so, though there have been some real stinkers along the way.

Amidst the rubble arise such gems as "Iron Man", "Spider-Man" and even "The Dark Knight". Even "Hellboy II's" nod to Barry Manilow gave me a geeky fangirl moment of my own.

Generally my enjoyment of said popcorn fare depends on two things: It's either got to take the silliness of the genre very tongue-in-cheek, or seriously enough to make me buy the outrageous concept.

This means the hero has to be irreverent and fun, or the villain has to be extremely dark and maniacal, i.e. "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight."

Gauging my comic book movie criteria above on the trailer for "The Green Lantern," I was generally excited about opening night.

The character of Hal Jordan promised to be irreverent, cocky and funny, and let's face it...Ryan Reynolds is not hard on the eyes. He's also got a charming quality about him that makes him highly watchable, so allowing him to carry the movie was a-okay with me.

Just give him the opportunity to take his shirt off and I'll be there opening night... gar-on-teed.

I realize going into these movies that the plots are going to be absurd, and the story will depend more on special effects rather than character development. Why critics continue to bash these popcorn movies for being anything other than this is beyond me.

The good news is that "The Green Lantern" is a good time. The plot is a little cluttered and scattered, and the character development plays second fiddle to the heavy-handed theme of "Will vs. Fear," but the audience I shared this midnight showing with didn't seem to mind much. They laughed at all the right spots, and there were no grumblings of discontentment as the credits rolled. Most even stayed through the credits for the special tag at the end (which made absolutely no sense in the context of the story BUT was a toss to the diehard fans and sets it up for a sequel.)

Yes, it was heavy on the exposition - much like "Thor" before it. I suppose it's hard to get around given that we're covering decades worth of information to get the non-geekboy audience members on the same page.

Still, it's a little boring and wish we could find a better way to do it as it definitely treads on the "show don't tell" rule. Had I been writing it I would have been tempted to keep the otherworldly stuff till Act II just to juxtaposition this new information with Hal's character development. I think it would have been more spectacular that way, but unfortunately I was not one of the five or six writers they had tossing spices in the gumbo...my opinion was not a factor.

(But to its credit, "The Green Lantern" doesn't do an unsuccessful bait-and-switch at the beginning like "Thor," which tried to cash on in Jon Favreau's ingenius "Iron Man" scene sequencing but failed miserably.)

Hal Jordan is a lot more interesting as a character than Thor as well - and certainly experiences no shortage of wiseass quips to keep the audience entertained as he stumbles through poorly defined character development. Frankly I don't buy that the thing standing between Jordan and his duty as a Green Lantern is fear. He's far too reckless (as demonstrated in the opening scene where he has a dogfight with unarmed jets) to be that compromised by fear. None of his interactions with other characters were fleshed out enough to support this theory, either.

Another character who suffers from a lack of focus and development was Hector Hammond, as played by Peter Sarsgaard. From the absolute glee he derives out of portraying this character you know immediately something big is going to happen - and it does - but his character suffers from a lack of foreshadowing that would have given the Big Event a little more punch.

And speaking of punch...

There are some definite cringe-worthy cheese moments throughout the story. The minute the narrator attempted to explain that green was the color of will I turned to my husband with a, "You gotta be shittin' me, right?" woeful glance of wifely tolerance. No offense to the fans out there but the color thing was a big cheese sticking point for me, as were some of Hal's constructs* when trying to fight the bad guys... i.e. the big green fist used to knock out a bad guy.

I mean, really?

(I know it's a comic book thing like "HULK SMASH" but ooooboy. Serve me up some wine to go with that big ol' block of cheese.)

*For those who don't know, the ring gives the Green Lantern power to create anything from his imagination to use in battle to defend the universe from evil. So as you can see, criticizing such a movie for being cheesy would be like getting mad because a camel's back is all lumpy.

It's just really hard to be mad at this movie for not being more than it was set up by its source material to be. In the end, despite it's flaws, I had a good time. Some movies are just meant to entertain, and this hit that mark for me.

Audiences are going to like it more than critics, but I'm okay with that... especially when the steaming pile of movie mush that is "Superman Returns" rates at more than 70% on Rotten Tomatoes where my own not-so-guilty pleasure "Pirates of the Caribbean" has an ugly green splat next to its name.

I know what I like.

And I liked the The Green Lantern.

It didn't earn the five-star review I gave "Iron Man" - but I'd watch GL again before "Thor."

It ranks up there with "The Incredible Hulk" as pleasantly re-watchable, and a movie ticket not wasted.

Plus it has Ryan Reynolds without a shirt.

What else could a non-geekboy dutiful wife want?