Green Lantern (2011)

I came to Green Lantern with a pure neutrality. Recent critical eviseration  mixed with liking the people involved left my sense weighed evenly as to what I expected. But then there is a significant 'genre-mixing alert' feeling that comes embedded in it. The Green Lantern is a human Air fighter pilot who is given super powers by cartoony aliens, who live on a 1950's sci-fi style-planet. As I see it, not knowing very much at all about comic books, this is utterly unique in the sense of attaining superpowers. Either you are born with them al la X Men, Superman, Thor; or you make it by being rich - Iron Man or Batman. Sometimes something out of your control happens like in The Hulk or Spiderman but you never just get given them by admittedly dying but benevolent ailens AND I think for some reason this does rub people up the wrong way because they're not used to it. Maybe it's not quite that. I think this movie confuses people as to whether they're watching the comic book movies, that Marvel usually make and a total CGI animated movie; some of the film feels partially realistic technological sci-fi and some is Star Wars style alien creatures and CGI worlds and.... It doesn't sit well together. Usually you do one or the other. Basically what I'm trying to say is that sometimes it feels like the summer action blockbuster and others like animated kids film. We all generally see the summer blockbusters (against our better judgement) but despite being generally of good quality, we don't all want to watch animated film because they're made for kids. I don't really know how much of this is down to Martin Campbell, since the man obviously knows his way around an action pic, having made 2 of the best Bond films but he's never worked this extensively with CGI before and maybe that's telling...
Ryan Reynolds is fairly good at this action heroic stuff and aquits himself pretty well. If you find him likeable, there's nothing to dissuade you but i'm sure he grates on as many people and 2hrs with him and CGI ailens would drive people up the wall. Maybe more interesting is Peter Saarsgard as the scientist made evil by evil alien... stuff like NORMAL SUPERVILLAINS! He's really channelling a particularly acidic John Malkovich and it's wierd to see him in film's like this yet, he's a good match against Reynolds, i think at least.
Blake Lively joins the ranks of Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johannson and other actresses completely underused in these movies as 2D strong women. Look Hollywood... Either make a good female superhero movie or just leave them out of them- that would surely be less offensive than the way they are used (in every sense) in these films. On the other hand, Mark Strong is the film sparingly and he's great; a real backbone of anything he's in.
As to whether it's worth seeing, i veer on NO as it's a bit of a failed experiment mixing the live action and CGI in this way but if you're curious, it's no waste of time...

I watched Green Lantern (2011) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Cop Out (2010)...