No Shine From Green Lantern

Green Lantern is chock-full of special effects, but they’re not enough to rescue this superhero flick. Critics complain:

• “Green Lantern is bad,” writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. It’s "impeded by lame jokes; evocations of better movies; an ugly-bruise palette of black, green, and purple; and a formulaic script that mechanically switches among story threads as TV shows often do.”

• “The effects are so omnipresent it's like Reynolds' perfect hair is floating in CGI limbo. Yet when they need punch, there's no flair,” notes Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News. "And while 'tween boys may marvel at all the exotic lifeforms, Sarsgaard's Elephant Man-headed baddie is more icky than menacing."
• The character himself is a problem, writes Mark Jenkins in the Washington Post. “No matter how many times he's been reimagined, Green Lantern retains a crucial flaw: He's a DC Comics character, without the weaknesses and neuroses that make Marvel Comics heroes interesting.”
• Writes James Verniere in the Boston Herald: “It took $300 million to bring director Martin Campbell’s dud to the big screen, and from its opening voice-over to its frequently laughable special-effects fight sequences, the film is wall-to-wall CGI cheese whiz.”

(More Green Lantern stories.)