Rated PG-13

Boredom is often a great motivator, but usually not when it comes to superheroics. Except, maybe, for the latest incarnation of the Green Hornet. Written by and starring Seth Rogen, “The Green Hornet” updates the now mostly-forgotten pulp hero for modern times by relieving him of any sort of motivation and setting him on a heroic journey that’s the equivalent of a trip to the supermarket. 

A great many things went wrong with Rogen’s rehash of “The Green Hornet,” but the biggest mistake was probably Rogen’s attempt at reinvigorating the Hornet in the first place. With its roots in the pulps and radio serials of the 1930s, the Green Hornet is mostly remembered for the character’s one-season TV show in the ’60s. But, even then, the show’s legacy rested primarily on the catchy theme (featuring a righteous trumpet solo by Al Hirt) and Bruce Lee’s performance as Kato, the Hornet’s chauffer/sidekick, and not the hero himself.

What attracted Rogen to the character remains a mystery, even after watching “The Green Hornet,” and it’s similarly confusing how director Michel Gondry, best known for silly-sweet bits of surreal melancholia like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Be Kind Rewind,” got attached to the project. No one, from the director to the stars to the writers (Rogen co-wrote the script with frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg), seems to fit in “The Green Hornet,” and that’s the initial source of the film’s overwhelming aimlessness.

Rogen stars as Britt Reid, the spoiled lay-about son of newspaper publisher Dan Reid (Tom Wilkinson). Britt’s life is a haze of bong hits and boozy parties, and Dan doesn’t squander an opportunity to let his son know he’s wasting his life. (At this point, how any newspaper publisher can be fabulously wealthy seems as much a fantasy as a costumed crimefighter.) 

And then, Dan dies—due to an allergic reaction to a bee sting—and Britt is left to do as he pleases without any chiding from his dad. His path to becoming the Green Hornet begins the day after Dan’s death, when Britt finds that his morning cappuccino wasn’t made with the usual care and artistic flair. The Reid household’s chief coffeemaker had been Kato (Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou), who, in addition to making coffee, maintained the elder Reid’s collection of classic cars. Kato and Britt have a few drinks, talk about how much of a jerk Dan Reid was, and then, in a drunken fit, decide to deface a memorial statue erected in Dan’s honor. Along the way, they stop a mugging and, because they love the adrenaline rush, decide to put on costumes and fight crime.

They have plenty of crime to fight, courtesy of Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz), a ruthless gangster who controls all the misdeeds in Los Angeles. Chudnofsky, and Waltz’s performance, is the only thing that rings true in “The Green Hornet.” Chudnofsky’s own quest—to become a more stylish and scary crime lord—is ludicrous enough to fit in with the movie’s light tone, but also provides lots of opportunities for action. 

The best moments in “The Green Hornet” belong to Waltz and occasionally to Gondry, who gets a few chances to let his own style show through. Otherwise, the film is full of more misses than hits. The supporting cast—including Cameron Diaz and Edward James Olmos—is wasted. Rogen and Goldberg’s script subs in the Hornet and Kato for the protagonists in their previous films, “Superbad” and “Pineapple Express,” but the jokes don’t really work. And the action sequences, of which “The Green Hornet” has plenty, fluctuate between cartoonish set pieces and moments of real violence. 

A sub-plot involving Kato and Britt’s mutual romantic pursuit of Diaz’s character is excruciatingly pointless, yet it somehow drives the film’s second act. It’s probably the best example of everything wrong with “The Green Hornet”—characters without motivation stuck in a movie without a plot, shouting at and punching each other to pass the time. That buzzing you hear is not the sound of a forgotten hero returning triumphantly to pop culture, but the steady drone of a film that has no idea what to do with itself.