Green Lantern: Press reviews

'simple-minded, nonsensically plotted and dimly acted. But I liked it much more than, say, Thor, precisely because it's so openly childish. '

'digital effects and scenery are good; some action sequences, including Lantern's rescue of an out-of-control helicopter, blast the senses. The film comes to a halt only whenever heroine Carol, slumberous and anomic, drifts into view, played by the misnomered Blake Lively.'

'Martin Campbell made Zorro and Bond work as contemporary heroes, but doesn't quite have the feel for poor old Hal Jordan. Green Lantern is dazzling in pieces, but we've seen too many sharper versions of the superhero origin story in the last few years. It's not Jonah Hex, but the battery runs low too quickly.'

'Green Lantern is ultimately let down not by the weight of its ambitions, but total lack of them. A charitable soul might describe the film as a classical genre piece, but feels more like a studio playing safe. Definitely not franchise material'

'"Green Lantern" is bad... Mr. Reynolds isn't wrong for the job; the movie is'

'Not all the crappiness can be excused on the ground that the filmmakers are trying to be faithful to the D.C. Comics original'

'confusing, moralistic and features a central character with all the appeal of a creepy lawyer.'

'big, baggy, flavourless'

'Another DC comics superhero, another ho-hum 3D movie adventure... The storytelling achieves a decent tempo, though the anything-goes effects conjuring will not wow anyone who's used a computer before'

'it's not clear why anyone does anything they do as the film becomes a mess of undercooked or rushed storylines - you'll wonder how, after such a promising opening, it all went so wrong.'

'director Martin Campbell handles the otherworld scenes, as well as the finale's tentacle-tastic Parallax fight, with expected aplomb. But whenever this Lantern returns to terra firma (too often), its imaginative flights are ground beneath the DC overlords' demographic-pandering heels.'

'all set-up and no pay-off: an origin story for a hero we don't much care for with an elaborate lore we have zero interest in, toplined by a star who's little more than a torso and a smirk.'

'None of the four male writers has a flair for romantic comedy or, on this evidence, any other form of cinema.'