Green Lantern - Movie Review

I will say that I have no bias towards GL, Hal, or sway either way towards DC or Marvel overall. In recent years, that's a little harder to judge. Hopefully that means a fair review. Just to make it clear, though, my favorite Earth Lantern is John Stewart, due 100% in part to the tv show Justice League Unlimited. Man, is that show awesome or what? But I'm not here to gush about it. Not this time, anyway. You know what to do!

Plot
Not my favorite part of the movie. There was a little too much back-and-forth for my tastes, and, like Hal, the movie sometimes doesn't know where it's going. The humorous parts were alright and fit with Hal pretty well in the movie, but I didn't feel like I should have cared about any of the other human characters. Parallax worked as a villain...sort of. He really only comes in in the last quarter of the movie and then he's taken care of in a way that, while good for intergalactic, is undeniably going to make the casual crowd tilt their heads. 
Other than that, the movie is a very standard coming-of-age origin story, except for the few plot points built up on Oa. I really like the idea of the thousands of Lanterns in the Corps and I wish they'd expanded on that, even though this is supposed to be an origin story.


Characters
Hal is alright. The rest of the people on Earth? Not so much, except maybe Hector. I wasn't very attached to any of them and didn't get a lot of mileage in trying to care about Hal's family. His dad's importance only in a flashback? His nephew's birthday showing up for a scene that did...what, exactly? Not much. Still, there are a few saving graces. Hector, who gets possessed of sorts by Parallax, is very hammy and proud of it. The conflict between them is...childish, and settled way too quickly. I do like the rest of the Lanterns, though. They're a lot of fun and casted very well. I just wish they had more screentime than 15 minutes. Really, I think that's the heart of the GL story, intergalactic conflict, and there just wasn't enough between characters here. Time will tell based on the stinger, though...


Music
A lot of rock stock stuff here. Nothing special, but I don't really watch a lot of superhero movies for their music anyway. It's really more of a bonus.


Action
Not a lot of action in the movie, but the CGI shots are pretty cool when they're in space. With an enemy as big as Parallax, it's hard to come up with a satisfying end to him, and I feel that battle was rushed. The giant energy stuff is pretty cool-looking, and the action does feel like a GL-type sort of action, so I guess that's a point. 


Overall
I'm getting lazy at this point. But I did enjoy the things I liked about the movie - duh. I didn't feel that the film did much particularly well, except have a good comic-book feel. Worth the money I paid to see it? Yeah, probably. Worth a DVD buy? Only if you're a big GL fan. If not, see if it you're really interested. Other than that, you may want to avoid it.
Score: 5/10