For a 'Green Lantern,' he's a dim bulb

Green is the color of willpower, yellow the color of fear in "Green Lantern," which should put the movie industry on red alert that the superhero genre is approaching meltdown.

It's not only that the title character feels dredged from the bottom of a comic-book barrel already skimmed of its cream. (After all, in "Iron Man" Robert Downey Jr. transformed an also-ran into a contender using nothing but natural charm.) "Green Lantern" is so unoriginal and sloppily assembled that even its creators seem bored by the now-familiar enterprise of building a franchise around another guy in tights.

Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, a Tom Cruise-ish test pilot who thrives on risk; Blake Lively is his former flame. Unbeknown to them, a giant black jellyfish named Parallax (voiced by Clancy Brown) is heading toward Earth to feed on the fear of humans.

After Hal unceremoniously receives the magic ring of the Green Lanterns -- a kind of universal police force -- he meets their imperious leader, Sinestro (Mark Strong), trains with the hulking Kilowog (Michael Clarke Duncan) and learns that the ring can turn thoughts into reality. Need to save a spiraling helicopter? Land it on a giant Hot Wheels track!

Peter Sarsgaard puts on a fine freak show as a mutating villain, but everyone's energy is sapped by the fatally bland Reynolds. The more he tries for Downey-esque snark, the flatter he falls; the more the film ribs itself, the more it seems to be apologizing for its shortcomings. At this point, it's the superhero movies themselves that need a white knight.