"They were like, 'Talk loud because the engine will be roaring,'" Rogen laughed. "'You've got to talk over the engine; there's announcements early on in the flights. You've got to take that into consideration.'" 
 
 But Rogen didn't just diss that promising-sounding but poorly received film. 
 
 His self-deprecation also extended to The Green Hornet, which he cowrote with Evan Goldberg and starred in, calling it the "perfect storm of bad s--t happening". 
 
 "We were making it for America and China at the same time," Goldberg added. 
 
 "We shouldn't make expensive movies where he can't just do a million dick jokes," Rogen cracked. "That's what we've learned over the years. That's our strength. Play to your strengths." ||||| Harnessing the power of humor 
 
 By Dan Kois 
 
 Friday, January 14, 2010 
 
 This morning, the unconscious bodies of three pickpockets were found on the front steps of The Washington Post's offices. Safety-pinned to one was an envelope containing the following movie review. 
 
 Yeah, I think you know who I am. Big guy. Wear a mask. I protect the innocent of Gotham from the garbage who pollute the streets with violence. 
 
 That's right. I'm Batman. 
 
 But now there's another masked vigilante on the streets. Calls himself the Green Hornet. He's taking over Los Angeles. There's a movie out about him right now. It's called "The Green Hornet." Obviously. 
 
 It gets my bat wings all riled up. Let me tell you why. 
 
 There was a time when movies about superheroes were dark and full of angst. Like "The Dark Knight." You know just from the title what that movie's gonna be like. Broody. Angsty. I'll be doing a lot of thinking on rooftops, you know, about justice and whatever. Maybe the girl I love gets blown up. 
 
 Then this johnny-come-lately shows up. This punk, the Green Hornet. His movie's fun. It's light-hearted. It's full of jokes. Jokes! My enemies tell jokes. Riddles, whatnot. Heroes don't tell jokes. Heroes keep it grim. Saving people is serious business. 
 
 When they made a movie about me, they hired Christian Bale to play me. Serious guy. Serious actor. Intense. So who plays the Green Hornet? Seth Rogen. A jokester. A funnyman. A Canadian, for Pete's sake. Sure, they had him do some crunches, but still, it just points to a real lack of seriousness in this movie. 
 
 Just as an example, when I'm weaving the Batmobile through the streets of Gotham, with explosions and gunfire on every side, I keep my trap shut. Maybe I utter a single quip through gritted teeth after I capture the bad guys with my Batarang. 
 
 But this Green Hornet guy? "This is awesome!" he yells. "Oh man, now we're in a car chase!" 
 
 What is this, amateur hour? 
 
 I was prepared to like this Green Hornet kid. We have a lot in common. Take his secret identity. Britt Reid's a millionaire playboy, which struck a chord, although his tastes run less toward tuxedos and fine art and more toward parties drenched in beer and Silly String. Like a certain superhero I know, he loses a parent unexpectedly; when his father, played by Tom Wilkinson, dies, Britt inherits his mansion, his garage full of luxury cars, and the newspaper he edited for years. (Yeah, I thought newspaper editors drove Hondas, not Rolls-Royces, but that's Hollywood, I guess.) 
 
 But does Britt Reid seethe about the death of his father? Is he filled with rage? No! He resented the old man, so he saws the head off his dad's memorial statue. What kind of hero does that? 
 
 Look, I will grudgingly admit that much of the movie was really funny. Sure, I didn't laugh - in lieu of laughter, I emit a harsh sound like a dog's cough - but all around me, the crowd really seemed to be enjoying themselves. Rogen and Jay Chou, the charismatic Taiwanese pop star who plays Britt's partner, Kato, have real chemistry. The movie somehow manages not to marginalize or insult Kato, a character who in the early "Hornet" radio serials was something of an offensive Asian caricature. (What! I've been thinking about getting a sidekick, so I did some research.) 
 
 In fact, Kato's often the best part of the movie. Britt calls him a "human Swiss army knife," and he's right; Kato is not a sidekick, but a fully formed hero who's full of surprises. And the gadgets he develops for the Hornet's sweet ride (a souped-up '65 Chrysler Imperial, respect) are pretty sweet. I've been thinking the Batmobile could use a fax machine and a turntable. 
 
 But really, I just want to make it clear that I am personally offended that someone would make a silly superhero movie. That's unacceptable. They couldn't even get a dark and complicated director such as Christopher Nolan to direct it; instead, it's directed by Michel Gondry. Michel Gondry! The Frenchman who directed "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and those White Stripes videos! How is that appropriate? 
 
 True, some of the handmade effects in which Gondry specializes work well in "The Green Hornet," dramatizing how Kato, for instance, can beat five guys up at once. And I guess that maybe Gondry's easygoing comic spirit is a better match for a movie like this than Nolan, who proved triumphantly with "Inception" that you can make a gigantic hit movie that contains zero jokes. (I loved it! I saw it four times, and asked Lucius Fox to start developing that dream technology for Wayne Industries.) 
 
 And what about the villains? My most recent nemesis was a crazed murderer whose ruthless anti-philosophy shook me, and the city, to the very core. Chudnofsky, the villain in "The Green Hornet" - played by Christoph Waltz - is having a midlife crisis. That's not serious! 
 
 Sigh. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Or, in this case, a joke. Well, let me employ sarcasm: Well done, Seth Rogen and Michel Gondry. You made a superhero movie for people who thought "The Dark Knight" needed to lighten up. That's so funny I forgot to laugh. 
 
 No, seriously, I forgot to laugh. I actually don't know how. Alfred? 
 
 Contains violent action, language, sensuality and drug content. ||||| You could sit through a year’s worth of Hollywood comedies and still not see anything that’s genuinely knock-your-socks-off audacious. But This Is the End (opening June 12) truly is. It’s the wildest screen comedy in a long time, and also the smartest, the most fearlessly inspired, and the snort-out-loud funniest. The movie opens with Seth Rogen at an airport, where a passerby says, ”Hey, Seth Rogen, what up, man?” So you immediately know that he’s going to be playing a version of himself. In fact, everyone in the film is playing a version of him-or herself. Rogen picks up his buddy Jay Baruchel (who’s less of a star than anyone here — a running gag), and after getting stoned, they head to a party at James Franco’s house. Everyone from Jonah Hill to Emma Watson is there, and what transpires looks so much like what you’d expect a party with hip young actors and comedians to look like that it’s as if we’d wandered into the ultimate episode of Entourage. The jockeying of movie-star egos, the drugs and sex (Michael Cera is the group’s libertine nerd), Rogen and Franco brainstorming a sequel to Pineapple Express — it’s all cheekily plausible. 
 
 Then Rogen and Baruchel venture out to a convenience store to feed their munchies, and they hear a crack, and blue light pours down from the heavens. It’s not just an earthquake — it’s the Rapture. The world is coming to an end! The two hustle back to the party, where most of the guests flee (or try to), and before long there are only five of them left in that house: Rogen, Baruchel, Franco, Hill, and Craig Robinson. For a moment, I feared that This Is the End might be a stunt that wears out its welcome in 10 minutes. But Rogen, who co-wrote and codirected the film with Evan Goldberg, does something incredibly sly. The movie doesn’t play the end of days for laughs. It’s an honest-to-God metaphysical disaster movie, a fusion of Earthquake, 2012, Night of the Living Dead, and The Exorcist. With the apocalypse played straight, the comedy can take off from it in a way that’s all the more explosive, as it was in the fantastic Shaun of the Dead. 
 
 Sinkholes are sucking people into infernos, but inside Franco’s house, the movie-star self-absorption gets raised to an insane new pitch of competitive backbiting. The interplay is so fast and obscene that you feel like you’re eavesdropping on the sorts of things comedians say to each other when they’re off camera. Then Danny McBride shows up, tossing insults like cherry bombs, and the hilarity just grows more scandalous. This Is the End pushes the envelope — a severed head becomes a soccer ball, and Franco and McBride turn a fight about masturbation into a confessional laugh riot. Yet through it all, the movie is wonderfully deadpan about the ”reality” it’s showing us. Is Jonah Hill really a narcissist who wears his nice-guy facade like the diamond stud in his ear? Is Rogen really a guilty sellout? This Is the End has great fun tweaking their public images, even as it’s truly asking: Do people like this deserve to go to heaven or hell? The answer will crack you up and lift you up high. A
– Critics did not enjoy Seth Rogen's last movie, Guilt Trip with Barbra Streisand, and it sounds like Rogen didn't, either. "We shot that movie in the format that plays on airplanes only," Rogen said on comedian Doug Benson's podcast last week, according to E!. "They were like, 'Talk loud because the engine will be roaring. You've got to talk over the engine; there's announcements early on in the flights. You've got to take that into consideration.'" He also sort-of dissed the poorly reviewed The Green Hornet, in which he not only starred but also co-wrote. "We were making it for America and China at the same time," and it ended up being the "perfect storm of bad s--- happening," he said. Lesson learned? Rogen says he should stick to movies involving "a million" penis jokes. "That's our strength. Play to your strengths." (Click to read about 10 other actors who have slammed their own projects.)