Where did this film get derailed???

Rating: 6/10 (7 July 2008)

When I saw the first previews of this, I truly thought it was going to be the sleeper blockbuster of the summer. It looked slick, salty and witty. Will looked on top of his comic game; the expressions he impaled his drunken character is something every college animal house inhabitant has probably experienced more than one (I know I did). The special effects people didn't make him out to be at home being a super hero. Lift-offs, flight and landings were the kind of crash and burn a kid would feel when first learning to walk. All the editing of the trailers looked just soooo.... so promising! Then my wife and I went to it and my delight turned to concern after the first 30 minutes. Realize, the running length of this is shorter than WALL-E, and if they had someone that could have paced this film better and drive it using the comic abilities of it's primary star, it would have just been a perfect amount of time.
However, director, writer, producers left the reservation on this and turned a potential gold mind into a mucky slur of attempted fictional drama adorned with some very clever comic lines. Hancock is about a down and out superhero that just lost his ability to give a crap outside what he is suppose to do. If they had just followed that to where self realization and respect direction could have lead Hancock, it could have been a delightful movie.
BUT... NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo. They had to throw some totally obnoxious twists into it that almost breaks the sprockets that turn the wheels of this movie. I just CAN'T say much,(SPOILER!!!) but it seems Hancock was left for dead once by a woman that was suppose to be his wife. After that, the muddy soup just gets icky.
This said, the laughter in the theater nearly ended after 20 minutes. Leave it to Hollywood to mess up a perfectly promising movie with a perfectly silly plot. Not that it's a drag... you can watch the movie and enjoy it for what it is, its just not something you will commit to memory like Jurassic Park or ET. -BDP