Hulk
May 12, 2004Grade: C+
Just got around to seeing this, on DVD, and it’s a tough one to grade. I was tempted to give it a B- but decided in the end that it doesn’t really deserve quite that good a grade. Because to me a B of any kind indicates something that’s solidly above average and this movie isn’t that. In places it’s awesome, but overall it’s just blah.
We all know the basic story–Bruce Banner gets irradiated and turns into the Hulk whenever he gets enraged. The movie version twists the tale a little, making Bruce the unwitting subject of his own father’s genetic experiments that get unleashed by the gamma rays. Then Bruce must fight the military and his own father to fight off the curse that is Hulk.
The problem with this movie starts at the beginning–it’s too damned long. We don’t see the big green guy until the second half of the film. The first hour is spent slogging thru the back-story of Bruce’s childhood, and his current gig as a researcher at Berkeley. Now when we finally do see the Hulk, I must say the effect looked pretty darned good to me. That’s the reason for the “+” in “C+”–they largely got the effects right.
But like Van Helsing, a movie can’t sustain itself just on the effects. There is story here, and there are first-rate actors, but the pacing just falls flat and you aren’t really engaged by anything besides the scenes of Hulk smashing military bases and parts of San Francisco.
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