The Hulk

December 10, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 138 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

He’s big. He’s green. He’s really pissed off. He woke us up! Were it not for The Hulk himself appearing on screen, the rest of the movie would qualify as a prescription strength sedative.

The Hulk

The Hulk does not live up to its summer blockbuster hype. We’re sad to say it. We wanted to like the movie, but we think Ang Lee, the director, really screwed the pooch. Interviews with Ang Lee indicate that he saw the original screen play and didn’t like it because it was nothing but action. He wanted to put a deep storyline. There are tons of problems with that. First off the story he selected contradicts the comic book stroylines of The Hulk. Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s been successful for 30 years, don’t mess with it!

We thought all of the digital effects and the computer generated Hulk would bother us. It didn’t. And while The Hulk is on the screen, the movie is pretty entertaining. But Lee killed us with all of the dreck inbetween. Credit where it’s due though, in addition to producing some nice action scenes dominated by a CGI character, Lee’s creative use of split screens to give that comic book multi-pane feel was sheer genius.

If you’ve been under a rock, here’s the premise of the movie, slightly different from the comic book. Dr. David Banner experiments on himself and alters his DNA. It gets passed on to his son Bruce who grows up in a foster family after the government hauls away his real daddy. Bruce becomes quite the scientist himself, but has an accident with some gamma radiation. This gamma mixed with his altered genes makes Bruce turn into The Hulk whenever he gets pissed off.

The Hulk is 15 feet tall and only gets stronger and meaner that madder he gets. But the real scientific mystery here is what the hell are his pants made out of? They never bust and expand up to fit The Hulk and right back down to fit Bruce. We want a pair as we think they’d make great buffet pants.

You’ll have to suffer through at least an hour of dreck before you get to see The Hulk. And the performances by Eric Bana as Bruce Banner and Jennifer Connelly as his girlfriend aren’t exactly something that’ll keep you glued to the screen. We would normally say wait for DVD on this one, so you mercifully have a fast forward, but we actually are going to give it 3 stars for the simple reason that The Hulk himself really does need to be seen on the big screen.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 3 Stars, Action, Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Josh Lucas, Nick Nolte, PG-13, Sam Elliott, Theatrical