Green With Angry

That's actually Travers' head to scale

OK, so what did expect from another Hulk movie, never mind one that has Liv Tyler playing a cellular biologist, right? Maybe it was Iron Man afterglow, maybe it was the boredom, but me and some dudes went down to the multiplex yesterday and saw the Incredible Hulk and, man, it was so, so, so bad. Made the Ang Lee one look positively golden.

So I went home and did what I usually do when I see a terrible movie in the theater, I went on Rotten Tomatoes to read positive reviews. And I found, to my surprise, that this piece of shit was 67% fresh, reduced only to 61% with just the so-called Cream of the Crop critics. So I read and I read and I read, and here are some of the gems I found.

The two recurring binaries come out of the obvious comparisons with Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk movie (widely criticized for being too psychological and for the Hulk looking too silly) and Marvel's other summer movie, Iron Man. Corey Calder in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has this summed up well enough in his sub-head ("The Incredible Hulk" sets aside the head-shrinking and delivers a slam-bang action treat")(kill me now), but exemplifies it even better in his opening paragraph:

Setting aside the ponderous Freudian themes of Ang Lee's 2003 "Hulk," this installment substitutes momentum for depth and bombastic battle scenes for character development. It lacks the graceful balance of those elements that made "Iron Man" the gold standard for superhero films, but it's a blast for demolition fans.

The problem with these comparisons, and the Iron Man one especially, is that (unlike director Louis Leterrier's Transporter flicks, which are vastly more entertaining than this one) the Incredible Hulk isn't just straight ahead action, it has tons of scenes of brooding, longing, and yearning, they're just all really, really bad.

Kirk Huneycutt, in the Hollywood Reporter, uses the term "well-paced" to describe this, and I have no clue what he means by this, as I would generally take both fast-paced or slow-paced over slow-fast-sloooow-fast-slow-fast-slow-paced. Of course, Kirk Huneycutt is also an idiot. To wit:

You wonder why Dr. Bruce keeps worrying about a neighborhood being "safe." When a guy can turn into a creature that repels bullets and flips Humvees like Frisbees, what's to worry?

He DOESN'T WANT TO TURN INTO THE HULK AND/OR BE FOUND! How is that at all hard to understand?!

The action sequences are fine, I guess. There's one decent Bourne-ripping favela chase at the beginning, a lot of things get smashed (though not in very creative ways) and God knows I'm not one of those people that bitches about CGI in itself, but hey, Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic, give us a shamless, hyperbolic pun:

The final confrontation between the two monsters is a marvel (no pun intended)

Thank you Bill, I choose to believe that Rotten Tomatoes made you a Cream of the Crop critic solely because of your completely absurd name. Goodykoontz!

Finally, we get to Liv Tyler. Petey Travers (who adamantly and bravely refuses to believe that Banner wants stretchy pants for any other reason than "so his dick won't hang out") says "[Liv] does pretty and loyal better than anyone." Which, I guess is a fair description. God forbid that we might want some characteristics we can't find in a Golden Retriever from our lead female character though, especially one playing a fucking cellular biologist. She can't not sound mentally disabled. Ever. Stop casting her in non-idiot roles.

Maybe Michael Phillips, sitting in the old Gene Siskel seat at the Chicago Tribune, will be able to offer some insight on Liv (after of course, he gets done telling us that at 13, he was reading Proust and not Hulk comics, I'm serious):

Primarily, opposite the notably thin-lipped Norton, she brings enough of her own lip to share close-ups with all four of the Fantastic Four, let alone one green giant with a blackout temper and stretchy pants for all occasions.

What?! What the hell are you talking about?! Ahhh!

Phillips gets one thing right though, this score is one of the worst (he says "most boring," but whatever) pieces of shit in a while. If the constant reuse of that sad "walking away" piano theme from the old TV-show wasn't bad enough, both the suspense and romance pieces are some of the most boring, cheesy things ever. They put this film over the top into maddeningly terrible. My head is about to explode.

Tangent:
While the Hulk and the Abomination are battling through Harlem, I coulda sworn I saw Michael K. Williams (aka St. Omar from the Wire, aka the cop from Trapped in the Closet) on screen for like 6 seconds, having a piece of debris thrown over his head. So I IMDB'd when I got home (just outta curiosity, totally no White Man's "God-I-hope-it-was-him-and-I-don't-secretly-think-all-black-people-look-alike" Guilt), and it was, and what an odd cameo/waste of an actor. However, I did notice that Williams is going to be in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's the Road, which is directed by John Hillcoat, who made the awesome Proposition, also stars Viggo, Charlize, Guy Pearce, and Robert Duvall, and is out in November! So geeked.