Green Lantern

Oh, boy. Another comic-book movie. It’s been what, two whole weeks since the last one? The film starts off pretty colorfully, with things flying through space—all while our narrator intones some back story about an intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern. One of the space cops gets on the losing end of a skirmish with a giant floating head and plunges to Earth. With dying advice about great responsibly and all that, he passes on his secret decoder ring to hotshot top gun Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), along with a magic lantern. Then Jordan meets up with a couple more space cops and they school him in the Green Lantern way and send him off to save Earth from the giant floating head. As a superhero movie it handles itself adequately. Unfortunately, the script seems to have been passed through the hands of several writers (four, it turns out) and never really focuses on anything at all between action set pieces. It’s not all that complicated, yet everyone feels a need to explain things a li’l bit more than they need to be explained. But aside from that, the action generally delivers. Cinemark 14, Feather River Cinemas and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated PG-13 C.B.