The Hulk

Written 21 June 2003

Warning: This film review reveals most of the plot of the movie.

Ebert and Roeper gave this movie 2 thumbs up. I've given up on this review team as their taste is atrocious. I cannot believe that they awarded this piece of, well, trash such high praise. This is a movie with nothing good about it at all ... nothing.

I loved the Incredible Hulk when I was a child. He was one of my favorite comic book characters (although I despised the weakling Bruce Banner) and for years I looked forward to that time of month when the new edition of the comic book would arrive at the stands. Sigh. Those were the days - the days when I actually respected Stan Lee (the creditor of the truly great comic book characters).

This is also one of the more violent movies that I have seen in a long time. Not physical violence (although it has plenty of that) but hatred between father, mother and son, a cynicism that was shocking to behold on the screen. The writer portrayed Bruce Banner as a psychiatrists wet-dream and the father, well, he is one of those people who deserves a straight jacket.

Because of this hostility and hatred, I personally would have awarded this movie an "R" rating. not the PG-13 that it received. Children should NOT be allowed to watch this film at all. In spite of it's comic book heritage, the film is not suitable for youngsters. It will show them an evil regarding families that they do not need to be exposed to.

Okay, one of the traits about this movie that I truly hated was the way it was edited. It appears they wanted to give this film a comic books effect by putting multiple scenes together on the screen at the same time. Thus, you might see someone leave the room and also see his face in a kind of "picture-in-picture" effect. I found this distracting, annoying and unnecessary.

Before going any further allow me to comment upon the "awesome cgi effects". Ahem. They were okay. Perhaps I am spoiled by modern technology, but I was not all that impressed with the computer graphics. I was not fooled for a minute into thinking the Hulk was real - the transformation scenes were especially cheesy.

The movie opens with a horrible sequence showing the dad as a young man involved in some kind of bio-war research. The father was scum with no socially redeeming value. The opening few minutes were confusing, poorly scripted and uninteresting.

As time progresses what you learn is the dad creates some kind of super drug which would create a superman. He injected himself (against orders) and passed the genetic modifications to his son (Bruce Banner). Eventually he is caught and, in anger, sets off the nuclear fail-safe device, killing everyone in the area.

Now, here is where my sense of reality departed greatly from the movie. I mean, come on, a nuclear explosion in an American town and military base? No one has figured this out? No a single leak to the news? The United States can keep secrets, but not of that magnitude. Sorry, I just didn't buy it.