The incredibly bad Hulk

If endless close-ups of bacteria are your sort of thing, than go see this movie. For such is the extreme and unrelenting boredom of The Hulk, an exemplary monument to human failing that manages to be only slightly less exciting than, say, the Weather Channel. An insult to the intelligence of comic book and movie fans alike, Hulk is unrivaled in its inability to construct any sort of meaningful characters, action, or, in fact, plot at all. There's no hero, no villain, and no point.

This imbecilic excuse for a movie follows an equally imbecilic excuse for a superhero. Born to a genetically altered father and possessing a few glitches in his own genetic code, Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) is naught but a mild-mannered uber-geek working for the Berkeley Nuclear Biotechnology Institute. However, an accident exposing him to Gamma Rays, a type of radiation normally about as lethal as a well-aimed bazooka, unleashes the genetic anomaly within, i.e., The Hulk. Except it doesn't.

Even after the Gamma Ray exposure, which happens well into the film, the Hulk doesn't manifest himself until maybe a half an hour later. Director Ang Lee tries to tease the audience into a frenzy of expectation, inserting momentary glimpses of the Hulk, but not allowing him to fully appear until an anti-climactic sequence long after the audience's attention has permanently wandered. It's like he thinks we didn't know what was coming. Give it a rest, Lee, the title of the movie was a dead giveaway.

Before the Hulk appears, most of the movie is composed of meaningless exchanges between Banner and his ex-girlfriend, Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly). They're practically reduced to discussing the weather, repeating the same conversation about the mystery of Banner's past over and over again. One of the plethora of problems with this film is that few scenes take place with more than two people on screen. The characters are confined in their conversations to a single individual, preventing the energy of group interactions from invigorating this lackluster movie.

Leading the way in the flaccid acting that permeates this film is Bana himself. As though to accentuate the redundancy of his character's dialogue, his speech is repetitively robotic and devoid of any shred of emotion. What Connelly, who won an Academy Award for her rich performance in A Beautiful Mind, is doing in this calamity is anyone's guess. She turns in a half-decent performance as the only character that displays human sentimentality, but is hampered by her co-stars' unresponsiveness and the script's frequent nose-dives into inanity.

What triggers Banner's long-awaited mutation into the Hulk is his vast anger from years of emotional and psychological repression. Basically, that's the Hulk's only superpower: He gets mad. Really, really mad. And this temper only serves to make Banner even more unlikable. Spiderman, Pyro, Robin—these are all adolescent superheroes whose displays of anger and frustration are forgivable and make them all the more human. Hulk, however, is a full-grown adult, and his temper tantrums aren't remotely endearing, simply childish.

Hulk's powers may be lame, but Lee's use of them is lamer. He has created a movie the complete opposite of his previous action and plot-driven masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Four fight scenes find their way into this two-hour tribute to tedium. In the first, Hulk bravely does battle with inanimate objects. In the second, he valiantly repels the vicious advances of attack poodles. In the third, he boldly bounces across the desert pursued by every incompetent lurking within United States military forces. I would tell you what happens in the fourth, but Lee cleverly filmed it in total darkness, so I really have no idea.

Still, there is something refreshingly direct to the Hulk's fighting style. Hulk does not pirouette. Hulk does not parry. Hulk SMASH! Subtlety is not a word in the Hulk's vocabulary, the Hulk's vocabulary being mostly limited to "Garhg!" and "Ug?" This, of course, means that the dialogue takes a real plunge whenever the Hulk is onscreen (which is saying something). Hulk's brief tantrums send more innocents to their deaths than do the meticulous plans most evil villains, calling into serious question his "heroic" stance.

The pummelings are few and far between, and Lee is left to fill the empty space with annoying editing tactics and fancy wipes that do little to disguise the complete lack of substance or plot in the film. Character motivation? Please, that would be too sophisticated for this piece of garbage. Fluctuating between the tedious and the ludicrous and lacking both focus and conflict, this film is nothing more than a hulking disaster.

The Hulk is rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, some disturbing images, and brief partial nudity.