'Hancock' cast can't rescue story of seedy superhero
Did the moviemakers behind Will Smith's new picture "Hancock" have any premonitions of disaster when they included a train wreck as one of their big visual gags?
Probably not. "Hancock" will likely make lots of money for a while, and the train crash gag -- where we see seedy superhero John Hancock (Will Smith) rescuing trapped-on-the-tracks PR executive Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) and almost demolishing an oncoming freight train in the process -- is actually one of the better jokes in a movie that could use many more.
"Hancock" is definitely not in the same league with two previous superhero blockbusters, the surprisingly witty "Iron Man" and the surprisingly passionate "The Incredible Hulk."
The most surprising thing about "Hancock"? How unfunny and unimaginative most of it is, given the lineup of talent behind it.
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You'd have a hard time figuring out how a movie starring Smith, Bateman and Charlize Theron, directed by Peter "Friday Night Lights" Berg, with visual effects from John Dykstra and a producing team including Michael Mann, Akiva Goldsman and James Lassiter, would end up so overdone and underwhelming.
The idea at least seems promising.
Instead of the classic superhero, Smith's Hancock is an antisocial drunk and a bum. Foul-mouthed and bad-tempered, Hancock lives in a scrappy trailer in Malibu and thinks costumed crime fighters look like "homos."
The concept, and the movie, fall apart fast.
The writers -- and there must have been more of them involved than just poor Vince Gilligan ("The X-Files") and Vy Vincent NGO who take the blame here -- have imagined Hancock as an anti-superhero who has alienated the L. A. populace.
After that train rescue, Ray, a P.R. whiz married to Theron's knockout Mary (no Hancock fan, it seems) tries to sell big corporations on charity policies and "heart" product emblems. He gives Hancock a makeover, including a new image, a new attitude and a spiffy new costume. He also suggests that Hancock keep saying "nice job" to crime-busting comrades and serve some jail time to make up for past damages.
Was this idea inspired by the usual PR role of cleaning up messes for errant superstars?
Whatever the source, it quickly collapses into nonsense, and so does nearly everything else, including the loony plot twist involving Mary's super past, the absurd jail scenes where a head is shoved up something unmentionable, the subpar villains, a ludicrous Hollywood sequence and nearly everything else the moviemakers give us.
That includes trying to sell us the notion that the entire city would ignore a guy who can fly past skyscrapers and stop a speeding locomotive barehanded. Wouldn't he have a single gold-digger or hanger-on?
Berg's hopped-up cinema verite camera style, rife with hand-held jiggles and documentary-style cutting, fits this kind of movie about as well as a dominatrix outfit and bikinis would fit Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
It's been a pretty good summer for movie superheroes, up to now. "Hancock" is a super-bum bummer that breaks the string. Like its hard-drinking, bench-squatting hero, the movie would be better off just sleeping it off.