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!- Spoiler alert -!

This review contains spoilers. If such things piss you off, please read at your own peril.

It is a foregone conclusion that The Hulk will be a huge hit at the box office. The real question on everyone’s mind is, “Is it going to really suck or just moderately suck?”

Good news, fans. It does not really suck, it only moderately sucks.

Eric Bana was admirable if not somewhat geeky in the angst-ridden lead. Nick Nolte did an good job in his role as a psycho father slash Mad Scientist ™. Nolte’s character does not seem to own a comb, or have a working shower. As Paul Clinton said in his review for CNN, Nolte looks just like he did in his recent wild-haired DUI mug shot. The final scene between human Eric and human Nick was outstanding. The final scene between Hulk Eric and ElectroMan-cum-RockMan-cum-WaterMan Nick was pretty silly.

Jennifer Connelly confused me. In both of her scenes with Hulk Eric, she plays them like she wants to jump in to bed with him. It. Whatever. When the three dogs show up at her house, she’s looking at Hulk Eric like, “Hiya big boy. Is that a scuba tank in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?” Same thing when she’s walking down the stairs toward Hulk Eric at the end of the big chase/fight with the army. Shouldn’t she be feeling compassion or pity and not lust? Not that I mind seeing Jennifer Connelly all worked up and lusty-looking, mind you. It just seemed inappropriate for the scenes in question.

There were some things that bothered me about the flick.

1. Why couldn’t't the bad-ass mutant French Poodle (no, I’m not kidding) break the freaking windshield of her car? What the hell does Honda add to those things now-a-days?
2. How could Nolte amass enough equipment to run experiments at his house? The guy was a janitor for christ’s sake. He had some pretty bad-ass gear in his lab, and was throwing laptops around his living room when Connelly visited him.
3. Why, why does General Ross (Connelly’s dad) allow Nolte to go piss off Eric after he has been captured? What was the point other than setting up the finale of the film? The way that scene was worked into the story made no sense at all.
4. How did Nolte get the three dogs into Eric’s hospital room for their initial meeting? Some hospitals won’t even allow my two kids during visiting hours. But somehow a drunken looking, shaggy-haired janitor was able to bring three dogs and not be noticed? Why did he need to bring the dogs? What was the point?
5. When you spend $150 million on a film, you shouldn’t be stingy with the CGI. When Bana and Nolte are (separately) bombarded with gamma radiation it just looked retarded. I’ve seen better effects in Dr. Who episodes.

The movie was pretty to look at. The Hulk itself was very convincing. It was not in the same league as Gollum from LoTR, but it was good.

I give it a 5/10. It would be 6/10 if we could have seen Connelly naked or if it were missing some of the stupid plot devices.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2003 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.