Critic Reviews

So what we have is a movie that will make at least two important groups happy. New Orleans boosters can cheer Green Lantern for its local roots and for the possibility that the inevitable future installments could return to town. And the purists can cheer, knowing that Campbell and crew have done Green Lantern justice.

Serves up all the requisite elements with enough self-deprecating humor to suggest it doesn't take itself too seriously.

For all the CGI action sequences and butt-rocking Dolby sound effects, in fact, Green Lantern is most satisfying when it sticks close to stodgy comic-book archetype.

It's not only light, it's thin. It's self-deprecating to a fault. Reynolds is required to practically wink at the audience, as if to say,"I know this looks silly."

Green Lantern does not intend to be plausible. It intends to be a sound-and-light show, assaulting the audience with sensational special effects. If that's what you want, that's what you get.

An attempt to infuse an earnest piece of comicbook lore with an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek sensibility yields decidedly mixed results in Green Lantern.

Takes forever to get going and then goes nowhere.

More science-fiction space opera than superhero epic, it works in fits and starts as its disparate parts go in and out of effectiveness, but the professionalism of the production make it watchable in a comic book kind of way.

Apart from having no particular reason to exist onscreen, especially at these prices, it's not half bad.

Reynolds makes Hal a perfectly functional comic-book hero, but there's a big difference between functional and super.