Current mood:	angry
Entry tags:	cinema, hollywood, screenwriting craft

HANCOCK - A movie review
I saw HANCOCK two weeks ago -- took my brother Andrew to see it because he asked -- and have waited this long to post about it because it's so flawed. It's got a messed-up premise that's taken me awhile to puzzle out how wacky and messed up it is. And even now, I bet more stuff occurs to me. Now my brother said it wasn't a great movie, but it was fine entertainment. So there you go -- confirming that one of the downsides of writing and analyzing screenplays and story structure is that it makes you too picky of an audience.

The good stuff about Hancock: Some scenes and set-ups at the beginning about the premise "What if a superhero wasn't a hero? Not a super villian either -- just a drunken asshole?" Surely there have been many 3-panel comic strips, drawn by witty teenage boys I would assume, that have covered this territory. You can probably find them in school notebooks going back 50-60 years. With today's CGI, and Will Smith's undeniable charisma (Smith is Good Stuff No. 2, even with his cracked lips, stubble and gross tissue-less way of clearing his nose), this movie makes scenes of those that have action, reversals, false defeats and false victories. Those are fun! Hollow, but fun!

The problems with the movie are mostly two-fold: it starts with a tone and scenes that promise a different story so it has to do a major shift in the middle to a different movie, and then it manipulates us with a false tragedy. I'll cover these behind the break, but there really are not many reasons to see HANCOCK, and the blame for that lies with the lazy sceenwriting.

SPOILERS!! The story makes Hancock a drunken asshole savior, implausible in itself, for no other reason than that's what the movie wanted. I despised this movie for its HUGE lack of backstory told in a plausible, honorable way. Hancock seems to have been drunk long enough to get the citizens of Los Angeles chapped at him. But what was he doing before that? He says he was found unconscious and woke with no memory (the amnesia gambit -- always a slimy way to plot), and the reason Jason Bateman didn't read about it was because it happened 80 years ago. Did he wake up and soon discover his superstrength and ability to fly? Was he straight-and-narrow for decades then got hooked on the juice? We don't know. Even after Jason becomes fascinated with him and researches him, the script doesn't fill in any more.

And what about a town where people will look a super-strong freak in the eye, one who's notoriously erratic and reeks of booze, and say things like "get out of here, asshole!" and "we don't need your kind!" Would YOU do that? Remember little Billy Mumy in that old Twilight Zone episode who could do things with his mind? That whole town had years of practice in saying, "yessir, whatever you want, sir!" That's what you have to act like with a person uncontrolled by laws of physics or man. But here we have people on the street in L.A. -- and including the loathsome Nancy Grace -- spitting in Hancock's eye.

Then after the mid-point shocking reveal that JASON BATEMAN'S OWN WIFE is also an immortal, flying, superstrong woman, then we get Charlize Theron giving some backstory. And it's CRAP! Hand-waving of the worst sort: "Some people call us angels, some gods, in this age we're superheros." And "we were made in pairs" -- by whom? Born out of wombs or mud-babies infused with the breath of life? Or were they even babies, assuming they haven't changed from their mid-30s appearances in decades or centuries? We get no clarity. We just get enough goofy sort-of premise to try to make a plot work.

I submit that a being with a drinking problem and a flash temper is NOT a hero. Hancock has to be guilted into most of his saving acts. But by the end, Charlize tearfully tells him, "You have to be a superhero; that's what you're for!" He had no life goals at the beginning aside from drunken oblivion. He's a villian! But they don't want that kind of arc for him, so they dance around his compulsions and have Jason diagnose an emotional problem: "You're lonely, Hancock. You just want to be respected." But a good writer creates a character whose actions and dialog show us what he wants and needs.

So the mid-point climax, with Hancock unable to resist his attraction to Charlize, and a super battle waging, makes her come off as an awful, deceitful, two-timing bitch woman. Hancock is chasing her, demanding she tell him his origins because someone else with strength like his must know where they came from (a plausible motivation). She fights him, refusing. Even though she's been hiding as a normal human, she carries the battle to the streets of Los Angeles. Finally, just as the bad guys pump bullets into Hancock, she gives him the hand-waving backstory, oh, and lets him know: For some stupid plot reason also not motivated or logical, when the couples are together, they lose their powers. And the final climax, him fighting bad bank robbers even in his weakened state, is meant to make us cry because he gives up his mate so he can be strong and save the world.

Only not really. She won't have him, and he can also choose to live as human among humans. But we're not supposed to think about those plot options.

So we're supposed to believe that Charlize goes back to Jason after that, lives as his normal wifey and nobody bothers her. And she gets the solace of a family's love, but Hancock? No, Hancock has to be solo tough guy, fighting crime. But even though it's essentially the SAME situation he had at the beginning of the movie that made him a drunken mess-up, now he's a lonely but honorable super hero. Supposedly it's because he knows his history -- but what he got was what we got: that silly, lame, hand-waving sort of story. He suffers from false tragedy -- its only purpose to wring a tear from us.

Crap storytelling; I hates it!