Hancock

I was really disappointed in this movie. I expected much better.

It was pretty good up that that moment where -- and I don't think this is a spoiler to anyone who hasn't seen the movie -- a refrigerator goes flying through a wall.

Up to that moment, there were some nice bits about what it means to be a 'super' hero, the marketing of a superhero, the loneliness of a superhero. They could've taken this movie to another level, by putting into conflict the 'marketing' vs the ethics, the friendships vs. the right thing, and so on.

Instead, in an apparent effort to reach a deeper meaning, they jumped the shark. In a sense, I thought they were very disrespectful of the comic form. They were saying, we have deeper meanings here, and comics are silly and we aren't.

And in doing so, they reached for meaning that has been overdone in comics; that no self-respecting comic would stoop to. Because...it's quite obvious that other than Will Smith having superpowers, they didn't have a clue about comics.

I've seen this in my writer's group over and over again. Someone comes with a Science Fiction idea that has been done a million times, that was done to death in the first decade of S.F. , that has had Twilight Zone episodes and bad movies; and the writer doesn't even know it.

And sure enough, when you ask, they almost always say, "Oh, I don't READ science-fiction, I just had this cool idea."

That's Hancock, the second half. Stupid, half baked and very tired cliches.