2003 / 138 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“The Hulk” has been reimagined as a kind of Greek tragedy. The plight of Bruce Banner and the genetic experimentation that has been performed upon him, the accident in the lab that unleashes the results of this experimentation, his father conflict, his repressed memories, his lackluster love life which has gone to seed because he is unable to show his emotions enough that he can keep the woman he obviously loves hanging around…they all seem to illustrate, amply, that it’s not easy being green. When Kermit the Frog said it, he wasn’t just talking shit after all.

That’s about the only point being made by this film. And with all those psychological quagmires abounding, one might assume that this is an intriguing and exciting, even absorbing film. Unfortunately, none of those bits ever got under my skin. Nothing about “The Hulk” managed to grab me at all. Therefore, as well crafted as many portions of this film were, none of them ever did the one simple job I ask of a movie: keep me from shifting in my seat.

Okay, I can give the film certain praise. It has very good editing. The editor has done quite an admirable job cutting all this nonsense together. It doesn’t quite make the movie great, but it and the choices made by the director of photography do their best to give this film the look and feel of an actual comic book. It’s only the plot and characters, and lack of point to either of those that keep this movie from ever really taking off. Also, the juxtaposition of shots within the same frame sometimes gives the movie the feel of a comic book come to life, but it never really has a reason for existing. There were only a couple of instances in which I thought this method proved really clever. Otherwise, it was usually something along these lines: here’s a shot of a helicopter, now to the left of that is a different angle of the same helicopter and here at the bottom of the screen is yet a wider shot of that same helicopter. So what? We get it! A helicopter is flying! None of these shots is even really all that different from the others. So we basically get to see the same helicopter three different ways, none of them incredibly interesting. Oh, how very special. There are a lot of shots like that and it’s a neat device that I think could prove really interesting in an actual interesting film, but it’s simply a gimmick here. It never really takes off, no matter how unique it might be. And I guess the editor really didn’t do that amazing of a job either, come to think of it. He put everything together fairly well, but I still found my attention wandering a great deal of the time.

The deadbeat dad plot point is a fairly tired one. You see, Bruce’s father experimented with his own DNA, and then passed his genetic mistakes on to his son. Now, years later, his son has had an accident that triggers these mistakes into making Bruce a big, green colossus whenever he gets mad. So he hates his dad. Big deal. The main characters in lots of movies hate their dad. I’ve seen it and, aside from Nick Nolte playing this role with all the subtlety of a Vegas drag queen, no new wrinkles are really introduced into this relationship.

Then we have the love story, which is a dead end. There is zero chemistry between Eric Bana (who plays the non-green version of the Hulk) and Jennifer Connelly. Mostly because Eric is utterly bland in this film (wanna see a performance by him that will keep you awake? Rent “Chopper”). He sleepwalks through this movie, occasionally clenching his fists and turning into a CGI creature. Jennifer Connelly is good enough in this film, though she really isn’t given a lot to do. This role is nearly exactly the same as her role in “A Beautiful Mind” (both are women in love with brilliant men that have problems) only with elements of the Fay Wray character in “King Kong” thrown in for good measure. See, the Hulk is just like Kong. When the Hulk is a rampage, the only thing that can calm him down is seeing Betty (Connelly). When Kong was running amok, the only thing that calmed him down was seeing Fay Wray. Therefore, not only is the story of this film taking elements wholesale from “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” but from “King Kong” as well. It also rips off “Frankenstein” with the whole green monster trick, as well as Nolte’s father figure whom was basically a modern Dr. Frankenstein attempting to play God. (Which, in another boring moral, is bad, as we might have guessed.)

The elements of this story are expected to carry the movie. The only problem is that we have seen these elements a thousand times before in far more interesting interpretations. Nothing feels really new here. The split screens and unique edits are new, and Elfman’s score is decent, if not really one of his finest. The acting is adequate but never really extraordinary. Even at the end, when the movie really starts hanging out in left field and getting weird, I found myself strangely uninvolved. How can this movie feel this vapid? The special effects are good (the digital figure of the Hulk is probably the most emotive actor in the movie) but they still never quite engage the way they should. I’m not sure why, but there just isn’t anything spectacular here. It all feels so bland, so blasé. They made a decently put together film out of familiar and worn elements, but they never really bothered to invest it with that spark that makes a movie like this work. “Spider-Man” may have had a few flaws in retrospect, but at least it had that spark. It hooked me. It kept me involved. “The Hulk” was cold and distant. It was an artistic filmmaker (Ang Lee) trying his hand at a popcorn movie, and it looked beautiful quite often, and it was full of psychology and, I suppose, a bit of philosophy. But even these elements seemed tired and worn. There is no energy to this film. No true life force.

Oh, and “The Hulk” never really uses his powers in a superhero fashion. All he does is run from the military. I’m sorry, but that’s really boring. I don’t want to see The Hulk run from the military. I want to see him smash evildoers (and you can allude to a bad relationship with his father, but it feels like a mistake to devote this much of the movie to it). Not only that, but there is no real suspense here. As soon as Bana becomes the Hulk he is impervious to basically everything. Therefore, in all the big suspenseful moments where we are meant to be on the edge of our seat, we know that there is no real worry. Nothing can stop the Hulk. Nothing can faze him, which makes him even duller.

There is really nothing I can recommend about this movie. It isn’t terrible. But that’s about all I can give it. It did nothing for me. There were moments in this film where The Hulk has some wonderful facial expressions, where you can see the painstaking work that went into these special effects and you can see how special it is that a technician on a computer can wring an actual performance out of an arrangement of pixels, how he can make these algorithms and data bytes come to life and actually generate a feeling within you. But, unfortunately, the film never backs these moments up. The film never gives us a hook to hang these emotions on. So those poor technicians’ work is all for not. And why? Because all their ponderous psychology and silly technique never really add up to anything. There is no grand spectacle. There is no excitement. There is very little flair. All we are left with is a big, green dud: a big film about a big guy with big problems that I never gave a shit about. For all its ponderous prattle (much of which is very boring) it never arrives at much of a point.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2003 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.