“The Green Hornet,” directed by Michel Gondry, fell short of expectations.

The film begins with Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) inheriting his father’s (Tom Wilkinson) newspaper empire after his death. Reid decides to team up with Kato (Jay Chou), expert martial artist and mechanic, and take on crime by posing as villains while maintaining their hero status.

Almost every single aspect of this movie was disappointing. Rogen’s acting is subpar. His character attempts to be the comical, bumbling idiot, however, is not at all likable or relatable. Rogen is also the co-writer of the film.

The dialogue is dull and uninteresting in the serious scenes and not funny during the comedy scenes. The film’s slapped together plot doesn’t help the overall product, either. Tom Wilkinson’s character is depicted as a complete jerk with no depth. The film makes a botched attempt to redeem his character later in the film.

Jay Chou isn’t terrible in the film, but his character is wasted on the same pitfalls that every character falls under—they act like five-year-olds in terms of emotionality and the ability to think logically. There won’t be 10 minutes that go by that the audience won’t ask, “Why are these people so incoherently idiotic?” Cameron Diaz is so thinly developed that she practically ghost walks through the entire film as the poorly developed love interest.

There is also the addition of Edward James Olmos who serves no purpose other than to question Reid’s decisions with the newspaper company. In all honesty, he could have been easily replaced by a couple of concerned e-mails from employees and no one would have noticed the difference.

The only bright spot of the entire cast is Christoph Waltz whose performance is, to steal another reviewer’s allegory, like the proverbial sun. His appearance brightens the entire movie.

Along with the acting, writing and the overall narration, Gondry’s direction seems all over the place. Consistently, he’ll trade off between campy and serious without being effective in either. In lighter action films of recent years, the audience members are able to accept ludicrous situations by either being engaged in the story or the characters —and both elements are unsuccessful in this film.

This film had potential as a terrific superhero comedy, but instead we’re given Rogen making lazy homophobic comments and a plot and characters with little depth. If you have to see a movie this weekend, make sure “The Green Hornet” isn’t the one.