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Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern character he described to Comic-Con International audiences as a "guy who can throw a punch, tell a joke and kiss a girl."

By their very nature, superhero origin stories have got a lot of ’splaining to do. But even by comic book standards, Green Lantern’s back story, as introduced by DC Comics in 1959, seems pretty outlandish.

An intergalactic council of immortal elders called the Guardians of the Universe harness the willpower of the galaxy’s citizens. That green cosmic energy, stored in the Central Power Battery on the Guardians’ planet Oa, can be directed, through the will of the Green Lantern Corps’ gifted space cops, to materialize “constructs” used to fight evil. A Green Lantern might, for instance, visualize a giant green fist and use it to pummel an evildoer, or imagine a massive green net to hold a supervillain in place.

British filmmaker Martin Campbell, who deserves a lifetime achievement award for reviving the James Bond franchise with 2006’s excellent Casino Royale, would probably have to return the trophy for his work on Green Lantern, the uneven superhero film that opens Friday.

The PG-13 movie adequately explains the Green Lantern origins story — a must for a lesser-known DC Comics character often confused with other emerald avengers, at least by people whose apartments are not filled with neatly bagged comics — but the boatload of exposition bobbles unevenly in a sea of so-so dialog, rote character conflicts and freeze-dried earthly locales. Strangely, in 3-D the Earth scenes actually look more synthetic than the exotic sci-fi vistas that unfold in the digitally generated Oa.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)

The tale begins when Abin Sur, wounded Green Lantern of Space Sector 2814, falls to Earth. The honorable alien passes his power ring, and the portable lantern that charges it, to reckless human test pilot Hal Jordan.

Meanwhile, monstrous supervillain Parallax roams the universe, overpowering Green Lanterns Corps members with all-consuming yellow fear and frying opponents into skeletal ash. Eventually, the shapeless creature trains its evil intentions on Earth.

As Hal Jordan, it’s up to Ryan Reynolds to carry the audience through all the exposition. Reynolds is a likable performer and apparently he hit the gym hard to get his body into shape for a movie he’s fond of comparing to Star Wars. But the actor doesn’t get much to work with in terms of a heroic character arc: He starts out as a brash, funny maverick and concludes the film acting pretty much like a brash, funny maverick. Strands of the story that might have helped develop the character, like the introduction of Hal’s family, get jettisoned like so much space junk.

An energetic Blake Lively plays Carol Ferris, delivering the required inspirational-girlfriend motivation that accompanies nearly every superhero saga, but the extraterrestrial members of the Green Lantern Corps threaten to steal the show. (Check the gallery above for a recap of the movie’s sci-fi characters.)

The film’s strongest performance comes from Peter Sarsgaard, who does his best John Malkovich impersonation as biology teacher Hector Hammond. It’s an easily relatable transformation: Hammond, introduced as an envious nerd with bad posture and a downcast gaze, gets exposed to Parallax during an alien autopsy. Providing one of the movie’s most savory elements, Hammond winds up as a cackling freak with a swollen, wart-encrusted forehead the size, shape and texture of a basted turkey.

Tone is everything when it comes to balancing romance, action and humor in a picture of this kind.

Tone is everything when it comes to balancing romance, action and humor in a picture of this kind. Working from a script by two writing teams, Reynolds tries to alternate ironic wisecracks with earnest declarations of heroic intent, but director Campbell has a tough time zeroing in on a solid unifying rhythm. The generic soundtrack, which generates all the heft of an Air Force recruiting commercial, doesn’t help.

As for the visual design, some of the film’s spacey vistas look gorgeous in 3-D. Other scenes fall victim to a chintzy videogame-lite aesthetic. For example, the rampaging Parallax acts truly menacing at times but elsewhere comes across as a ridiculous version of Sinistar.

Oscar-winning director of photography Dion Beebe (Nine, Memoirs of a Geisha) handled the cinematography, but you wouldn’t know it from the generally flat Earth sequences. And despite the presence of Oscar-winning production designer Grant Major (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), the flatly generic city where Hal Jordan lives looks as if it’s been digitally pasted together from random urban skylines.

The movie concludes with Hal Jordan sailing into the ionosphere after announcing, “I’m going to look for trouble.” The line might as well be accompanied by a chorus of trumpets to announce, “We’re doin’ a sequel!”

Here’s hoping that Green Lantern 2, should it happen, signifies something more compelling than the color of money.

WIRED Virus-infected nerd steals the show.

TIRED Dense exposition weighted down with uneven visuals and wobbly tone.

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