YouSeenThat.com: Film Review
Hancock
by Jamie - July 19th 2008
“Do I have permission to touch your body, Charlize?”
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I’m not a professional film reviewer by any standard, and given the fact that I have about as much journalistic integrity as Richard Wilkins, which is bugger all, it means that I actually have to pay to see the films I review for this site. No, sadly I don’t get any studio kickbacks or tax breaks to sit through utter shite in order to give it a glowing review – so when I found myself completely bored a couple of Tightarse Tuesdays ago (technically it’s Terrific Tuesday), I decided to drop some of my hard-earned in order to find out why the plebs love Will Smith.
Cards on the table time - I find it really difficult to get excited about Will Smith films. Nothing against the Fresh Prince personally, but let’s be honest, the majority of his films are little more than pointless big-budget popcorn-fests. Yeah, so I wasn’t the only one who spotted that trend either? There’s actually a good reason for the types of projects that Will Smith takes on. Apparently when he first made his way to Hollywood, he sat down with his agent/manager and examined the top ten grossing films of all time to find out what was going to make the phat cash. Guess what? They realised that almost every film in the top ten was a pointless big-budget popcorn-fest. While I applaud Will Smith’s commitment to mediocrity, when is this guy going to take on some more meaningful roles - I actually thought he did a great job in The Pursuit of Happyness. Leave the blockbusters to the chumps, Will. Come on, surely you must be sick of buying ivory backscratchers and banging your wife on piles of hundred dollar bills? I sure as shit know that I am.
Poor attempts at humour aside, Will Smith’s latest offering is the action/comedy Hancock. Before you start sniggering into the back of your hand like an imbecile, Hancock tells the story of an out of favour superhero that enters into an arrangement with a public relations officer intent on improving his image with the public, only to find himself in a questionable relationship with the mans wife.
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The concept of the down-on-his-luck superhero trying to regain a little acceptance appealed to me – the alcoholic, foul-mouthed superhero John Hancock (Will Smith) fumbling and stumbling through life and causing general chaos was pretty entertaining for the first twenty or thirty minutes. You and I live in a world where superheroes are completely fictitious, but imagine if a superhero did exist, a superhero that was so obnoxious and reckless that you couldn’t stand the sight of the guy? This is the world we are introduced to, evident by the opening scenes where Hancock practically destroys half the city in order to apprehend a group of robbers. Rather than applause and appreciation, our hero gets nothing but abuse and the threat of legal action.
I was kind of digging Hancock at this point – but then I started to wonder how they were going to drag this out for ninety minutes.
This was about the time we were introduced to Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), an equally down-on-his-luck public relations guy who finds himself being rescued by the aforementioned John Hancock. In debt to Hancock, Ray brings his saviour home and offers to use his PR skills to rebuild the superheros public image. Okay, this could certainly be interesting, at least that’s what I thought until we were introduced to Ray’s wife, Mary (Charlize Theron). This was pretty much the point in the film where it went straight down the toilet.
Without giving away too much more of the story, even Blind Freddy could have seen that there was some sort of strange connection between Hancock and Ray’s wife – we did’t know exactly what it was at the time, but the countless uncomfortable glances and odd looks from the beautiful Miss Theron were about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the family jewels. I know that was the whole point, but come on, it was bloody painful to watch.
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Cue the ‘twist’, for a lack of a better word, and cue the flushing of a toilet. As far as I was concerned, at this point any semblance of interest in the original setup had pretty much been taken out into the Pine Barrens and shot in the back of the cranium. *Boom headshot!* Man, what a waste - it was a complete mess. I'd really love to extrapolate on what I'm trying to dance around, but I don't want to ruin the film for anyone who genuinely wants to watch it.
Ridiculous plot twists aside, the overall acting and performance from the cast was pretty decent. We all know that Will Smith can hold his own on the screen; he’s a bona fide veteran of the blockbuster, and his vulnerable John Hancock is a definite crowd pleaser. Charlize takes somewhat of a backseat to Smith, once again proving that she is not only a quality piece of arse, but a chick that can mix-up the role of a love interest and action goddess. However, of all the leads, I must say that I enjoyed seeing Jason Bateman on the big screen – I absolutely loved him in Arrested Development, so to see him in this film was a definite bonus.
Overall, Hancock had a lot of potential: an interesting premise, a good cast, humour, but a sloppy, piss-poor story arc/plot twist that completely and utterly ruined the film. Apparently the original screenplay for Hancock, known as ‘Tonight, He Comes’ has been floating around Hollywood for a good ten years or more, and the word on the street is that it is actually a hell of a lot better than this reworked piece of junk. It’s a shame really, Hancock could have been pretty good.
The A.D.D. Version:
The concept of a down-on-his-luck superhero had a lot of potential, however the 'twist' in the final acts failed miserably. Leave it for a rainy Sunday afternoon when you've run out of quality films to watch.
Random Observations:
See This Film If You Like:
The YouSeenThat.Com Popcorn Rating:
You're an arsehole, Hancock! Yeah, and just in case you suddenly contracted malaria and became deaf, I'll repeat - you're an arsehole, Hancock!
How does the YouSeenThat.Com Popcorn Rating work?
Well, it works on the theory that the more you enjoy a film, the less likely you are to be aimlessly shoving salty corn kernels into your gob, and a little more focused on what is happening in front of you on the big screen. Therefore, the more popcorn in our scorers bucket, the better the film. Pretty simple, huh?. Think of it as an inverse scoring system.