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Review: The Incredible Hulk

Written by Wayne Spencer

Sunday, 15 June 2008 05:33

Summer is here and with it comes a mini-age of high budget, super-slick, attention deficit friendly movies. Summer blockbusters.

This week's main entry: Zak Penn and Ed Norton's 'The Incredible Hulk' opened to respectable numbers and managed to return the Jade Giant to the big screen in what will surely be the first in a franchise of similarly themed movies.

'The Incredible Hulk', the latest movie in the new tradition of Batman Beginsing movies in flagging franchises (See also: Batman Begins, Casino Royale and maybe Superman Returns), was pitched as a sort of fix-all response to the earlier 'Hulk' offering directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). More action, a super-villiain and a less mind-breaking story.

'The Incredible Hulk' is a serviceable actioner. There's at least one fight scene in every act, so action folks should be satisfied, lack of action being a major complaint about Lee's original 'Hulk'. The story-arcs in the movie are majorly forgettable as are the characters and the movie has long tracts of bore punctuated by the Hulk inevitably tangling with the U.S. Army and finally with the big bad of the picture, 'The Abomination'.

The majority of the action, though watchable consists of somewhat clunky and plodding 'fight-scenes' by numbers fare. The Hulk himself, like most the other characters is somehow uninteresting. Now, I'm not sure exactly how you could make a 10-12 foot tall green man who ROARS frequently boring, but Transporter 2 Director, Louis Leterrier somehow managed it.

Congratulations... I guess.

Whereas Lee's 'Hulk' failed to deliver an understandable, interesting story with characters worth caring about, it did actually manage to present a curious, interesting version of the Hulk himself. Full of a character and somewhat like a child, but not necessarily dumb as a rock. Ed Norton's abortion of a screenplay actually fails on both these fronts. So you kind of get a boring movie full of forgettable characters AND a Hulk who is less than engaging and smolders with generic rage.

It's really the problem with the picture. At least a really bad movie (like Lee's 'Hulk') is usually inspired and there is some value within for that reason. This picture seems like a movie made by a commitee. Playing it safe and middling out to the point of indifference. Which, I guess makes it alright for a summer movie.

If you're in the mood for a not quite good, but not particularly offensive popcorn movie, 'The Incredible Hulk' is about the most adequate choice you could make this weekend. If you want to see something different, save your money for Wall-E.

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