Hancock: The Fresh Prince of the Air?

July 04 2008 18:57 Filed in: Movies
Hancock pounded out the box office register receipts this week, but what’s the word? Can Will Smith get jiggy with it as a superhero or will parent’s just not understand?

Hancock is one of those big summer movies that snuck up on me. Though I don’t sleaze around the movie theater like I did before the advent of my offspring, I still follow what’s happening closely enough that something like this usually doesn’t get by me. Is it crap?

As it stands, my first knowledge was a full blown trailer a month or so ago, and I’ve read almost nothing about it otherwise with the exception of an online review or two this past week.

Amidst the new age of Marvel and DC heroes making regular big screen cash the past several years, we’ve had a couple of decent “original concept” super hero ideas before this one. The Incredibles pops to mind as one of the slickest, the television series Heroes, and we also had Unbreakable, which was really a work of art. Of course, Unbreakable was made by M. Night Shyamalan before he completely ran out of ideas or sense…for the record, that happened right about 40 minutes into The Village and he hasn’t really put any coherent, entertaining cinema or writing together since.

Hancock decides to take the Heroes route which is making an average guy off the street the modern day hero. Of course, this time, they take it a step further…what if the guy was an alcoholic...AND an asshole. So far so good. It works.

Now some of the comments on the movie from others are that they wussed out on the script. That they toned it down and made is softer. Softer than what? I guess that was an advantage for me knowing little about it ahead of time. I didn’t have some horrendous hard-R rated hero or movie in my mind going in. I had no expectations for a specific level of “edginess.” So, basically, judging the film as objectively as I can, Hancock is an enjoyable flick.

Not to say that it doesn’t have some fairly significant weaknesses. First, does this movie work without Will Smith playing the title character, John Hancock? Tough one, but I almost have to say no. Will Smith is one of best things about Hollywood today because of his obvious work ethic.
He always elevates his material. Now, I’m an Independence Day apologist (and always will be), but ultimately, he elevated that movie around him. It was his breakout movie where his first blast of on screen charm and charisma was allowed to simply wash over the audience. As a result, the sense of fun that I liked about that movie really came from Smith’s sense of fun and his great performance.

Since then, whenever I see Smith starring in a film I know that he’s going to put himself completely into the performance. Hell, even in Kevin Smith’s sell-out film Jersey Girl, where he made a cameo as himself he was pretty much the best part of it…well we did have George Carlin in it as well as Liv Tyler to ogle...that’s another story.

Hancock takes a great concept with a workable script and hangs it on three extremely strong performances from its leads. Jason Bateman and Charlize Theron both really deliver this material as well. Bateman gives a great turn as a publicist who wants to turn Hancock’s image around and Theron, as his wife who really has a serious problem with Hancock.

For my money, what’s really wrong with this movie is the complete breakdown of the story in the third act. The first 30 minutes of the movie are note perfect. It could have been fleshed out a little more, but we are introduced to the characters and given the catalyst where the following two acts should take us.

However, as the movie wears on, the script was starts to wander. Was this movie a character study, a standard super hero/super villain plot, was it an “origin” super hero story, or was all this just set up for a sequel or franchise (what movie isn’t anymore, I guess).

Well, sitting here two hours after the credits rolled, I still haven’t figured it out. All I do know is a when we get to the home stretch, we start to have this minor train wreck of events that meander to the point that I really felt that there were substantial cuts made either to the script or the film itself.

 We only have one real major action set piece in the middle of the film and then we fall into this “origin” story that completely changes the dynamic. As this piece moves forward the movie comes to almost a screeching halt until it finally limps to a relatively pedestrian climax played more for emotion than action, which would be fine if it had been set up better.

There’s a couple of logical leaps and head scratchers that are either really thoughtless writing or simply a result of them cutting some significant explanation, not the least of which being the actions, motivations, and inexplicable expectations of the movie’s main villain…and for the record, probably one of the shittiest and most underdeveloped villains I’ve ever seen in a film of this genre.

The final cut of Hancock I’m sure had the intention of the character story pulling it home, which it does, barely.
Ultimately though, I still had a good warm feeling about the movie walking out. I liked it a lot. It could have been a lot better with not too much work, though, and that’s the frustrating part. However, I still had a pretty good time for most of the ride. I’d have to recommend it. It’s an entertaining summer movie. Will Smith makes this film work.

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