Who's In It: Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz, Tom Wilkinson
The Basics: Seth Rogen is the directionless, hard-partying doofus son of a billionaire newspaper titan. When his father dies under mysterious circumstances and a brutal druglord threatens to take over Los Angeles, the spoiled heir and his technical advisor/fighting coach/mechanic/guy-who-does-basically-everything pal Kato become a pair of masked vigilantes. They also ride around in the most gadget-filled car in the world. Think Superbad (Rogen and writing partner Evan Goldberg created both that film and this) meets superhero origin story, one where the dark knight is more Beavis/Butthead than Batman.
What's The Deal: Early in the movie Rogen tells everyone he's going to call himself "The Green Bee" before Kato invents the more menacing name. And then as you watch the story unfold and stumble and digress and stall in holding patterns of pointless goofiness and, for a minute late in the game, turn into Bjork's "Bachelorette" video, you realize that the film does, in fact, more resemble a bee flitting from flower to flower than a hornet out to make a sharp point. That's because Rogen/Goldberg and director Michel Gondry, three people with apparently no interest in making a typical superhero/action movie, have somehow been given the money to do just that. And this needs to happen more often, I think. Give me loose, idiosyncratic, comic meandering over stone-faced business-as-usual any day. It isn't the movie you're expecting, but it's got its authors' grubby handprints all over it.
Best Parts They Forgot to Tell You About In The Trailer: Nothing in the marketing of this movie suggests you're going to see any sort of cool action pile-up. But then, in the last 30 minutes, they unleash a tornado of violence, fighting, car chases, gun battles and stuff exploding. It makes you wonder if they felt embarrassed to be doing something so obvious, trying instead to sell it based on Seth Rogen making rubbery faces and rapping to vintage Coolio songs. But yeah, spoiler, all that satisfying mayhem is in here. They even use sloppy 3D to throw a bunch of car parts and fireballs at your face. And if 3D is going to look not-so-great, that's the least they can do to make it up to you.
Most Michel Gondrian Element: Unless you're a fan of Taiwanese pop music, you haven't seen Jay Chou before. He's a musician, a huge star in China, meaning that when its released over there they'll probably call it Kato Saves The Big Dumb Guy. And before acting in this movie he didn't speak a word of English. Everything you see him saying on screen was acquired specifically for the film and it gives every scene he's in an odd, clunky quality that's boosted by his strange comic timing. Some people will call that annoying; I call it daring and cool.
Entire Project Distilled Into One Scene: Everybody chasing and killing each other over a piece of fake sushi.