HANCOCK: Super Yawn
iView Author:Rusted Rick
(Kolkata, India)
EMAIL: ritchick.mozumdar [at] gmail [dot] com
Title: HANCOCK: Super Yawn
When the chips are down, things not going all right and trips to the theatre are neither SUPER or HAPPENING in anyway you can always count on the alien fighting, robot smashing rapper to turn things around. And WILL SMITH almost does just that, or at least he gives his best shot at doing so. Over the years WILL SMITH has an impeccable record at the box office, come-on nine straight block busters!! Every movie gaining more than a 100 million at the box office, that’s some record. And if someone calls him the greatest star in Hollywood today well you have got to say that he earned it.
And then comes 2008, the year of the super heroes. Frankly I cannot take it any more, iron man, hulk, and now a flying rodent and a red horny monster to follow; I need a break from superheroes. Am not against these films, hell I’ll be the first to watch “THE DARK KNIGHT” when it hits the theaters later this week (though that has got more to do with me being a fan of NOLAN than the fact that it’s a BAT-MAN movie). So when finally after a week delayed HANCOCK released on the Indian screens I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Then I heard some good reviews and well WILL SMITH was in it, if nothing I was sure that I’ll get my money’s worth of entertainment. Moreover some one told me that it sort of parodies the super hero genre…..SO Sunday afternoon I walk into the theatre, popcorn and coke in hand, munching away as the movie starts.
The movie started pretty decently, the bad guys getting away, the police chasing them in vain, and as we expect some kind of superhero to pop up from the sky we get the first glimpse of HANCOCK. Rough, bearded and totally drunk lying on a bench appearing to be absolutely disinterested with any heroics. After this one sort of gets into the whole mood of the film, and for which credit must be given to SMITH’S super cool attitude and style. Even the lamest of lines coming from his mouth sound priceless. But that’s about all that is good in HANCOCK, after the first 30 or so minutes are over, the film starts to drag, which is made worse by the writer throwing in ridiculous twists just to keep an element of surprise in the film and by the time of the climax, the film turns from a soft light hearted superhero genre parody to a melodramatic archetypical Hollywood film. The film eventually becomes exactly what it set out to criticize. Amongst the supporting cast JASON BATEMAN looked bored and sort of drowsy, much like most of the audience. CHARLIZE THERON seemed doped, but then again I never really liked her that much. Director PETER BERG seems to have overcome the MICHAEL MANN hangover from which he has been suffering for the last couple of years but that’s about the only good thing that can be said about his direction. The special effect except for the opening scene looked rather lame, where do they spend those 150 million dollars??? The script of the film was floating around in Hollywood for more than a decade, well it should have floated around a little more or even better someone should have drowned it long before.
Well that’s about it, the movie’s over and an overtly bored Sunday crowd yawned their way out of the theater. And if you were bored reading this review, you know exactly what I was feeling. Check HANCOCK if you are a WILL SMITH fan, and don’t have anything better to do one a lazy Sunday afternoon, as for me I would have much rather stayed at home watching MEN IN BLACK again.
Tags: English, Hollywood, Superhero, Will Smith
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
rick…
i felt pretty much the same about the movie except for the fact that for it was friday…..
the first half an hour was good was sorta enjoying will smiths antics as Hancock..but the second half sucked big time….the story about hancock and his lady…was just not happening……y couldnt they just let him be the way he was…..had huge expectations from this one since im a big will smith fan and i had liked the teaser as well….
as it turned out …the most disappointing movie for me this year ……
i felt same on sunday
i pray to god that there would be no sequel of this hammer.