I didn't have particularly high hopes for Hancock, given its troubled past. While the film doesn't completely shake off it's history, when I walked out of the theater on Sunday, my first thought was that it was better than I had thought it would be. I guess I would say it's decent.
The superhero movie, as a genre, is becoming increasingly crowded these days. Hancock looks to stake a claim in the comedic end of the landscape. As fertile ground as that might seem, when the only twisted weeds to grow out of the turf are Mystery Men and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, you have to wonder about its prospects.
That said, the first half of the film does a great job of introducing the character of Hancock and his problems. In doing so, the film addresses things that almost every other superhero film decline to discuss: the realities of damages from superpeople doing what superpeople do and how people might really react to a super doing something like stopping a freight train to save someone's life. It's funny and smart. It doesn't try to do too much, like explain Hancock. And then comes the second half.
It's always plain where the movie is driving us. Subtlety is not its strong suit. So when the reveal comes, it's not much of a surprise. Unfortunately, the reveal also isn't particularly good. The exposition to explain it all is this film's midichlorian moment. As the film tries to form a climactic moment out of the reveal, explaining Hancock and coming up with a challenge for him, it goes off the rails.
A large part of the problem is that Hancock is essentially Superman without kryptonite- a strange decision given that Hancock is not an adaptation and thus is not tied down to any pre-existing lore. Functionally invulnerable, the movie has to really contort itself to provide a meaningful obstacle to him. In the first half of the film, Hancock was his own obstacle. In the second half, in trying to provide an external villain, the film falters.
It falters, yes, but doesn't completely lose it. It's the film's good fortune that it earns enough good will in its first half not to blow it all in the second half. You'll never confuse Hancock for Batman, Iron Man, or even Hulk but it's not a bad film and its heart's in the right place. It's a heck of a lot better than My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
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