Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

Eternally Yours
By
Michael C. Riedlinger
Editor-In-Chief

            The superhero is a modern mythological being. We take these new gods and dress them in leather and spandex, but they are still very much the gods of old. In Hancock, that idea is taken a step further and runs very close to lifting the premise of Neil Gaiman’s The Eternals from Marvel Comics. Enough of the story is different from Gaiman’s that I don’t expect a lawsuit anytime soon, and the humor is all original, but this Will Smith vehicle still felt like it had a hard time getting off the ground.

            The problem is that very little of the film seems original enough to be gripping, or familiar enough to be fulfilling of prior expectations. We follow Hancock (Smith) as he drunkenly fights crime and saves civilians from disasters. Of course, we are meant to feel sorry for him somehow, but it is difficult to generate sympathy for a character that is his own worst enemy. When he saves struggling PR agent Ray Embrey (Jason Batemen) from a train collision, he sets off a series of coincidences that even diehard comic book fans may have trouble swallowing. Ray begins helping Hancock change his image and we watch as the superhero finds the humanity within himself. It is a basic redemption story, but the protagonist doesn’t have much of a fall from grace in the first place, so most of the redeeming is simply setup for cool visual effects.

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            If you don’t like spoilers, come back later. The flashiness of one super being is not quite enough to sell a film, so, of course, another one shows up. Charlize Theron plays Mary Embrey, Ray’s wife, and spends the first half of the film looking at Hancock funny via Paul Greengrass-esque camera close-ups. When she tosses him through her living room wall into the street, it isn’t so much a surprise as a moment that you kind of figured on. It turns out the two of them were once mates and have been around for over 3000 years. In order to keep her secret from her husband and the rest of the world, Mary fights Hancock all over downtown Los Angeles, because that’s the most subtle way to settle old debts… Lighting storms, smashed buildings, and crushed construction equipment all scream out “Here’s where we spent the budget”! While the lapse in logic was somewhat irritating, it was sufferable compared to the excruciating lack of any real direction in the film. We never get a true super villain to match Hancock’s power, and those antagonists that do show up are only mildly successful due to the overused “hero loses his powers” plot device. Superman Returns was not a good movie, so taking elements from it that turned off audiences and cobbling them into a Will Smith vehicle was just a bad idea.

            Sure, Charlize Theron is smoking hot in Hancock, and Will Smith and Jason Batemen hit all their punch lines, so this isn’t a total waste of celluloid. The problem is, there are better movies in theaters this Independence Day, and I don’t know that Smith can deal with another semi-success if he wants to retain his real-life godlike prowess at the box office. Hancock is one of those movies that has a lot of potential that just goes unrealized. Smith may be playing a leathered-up representation of Zeus, but he really doesn’t make lightning strike this time around.

Final Verdict (out of 5):