Strike two

Rating: 2/10 (8 May 2012)

Hero origins in the Marvel universe are often hard enough to believe on their own. (Radioactive spiders are more likely to give you radioactive blood poisoning than super powers.)
The Hulk, being basically Mr. Hyde on super-steroids, is notoriously difficult to pull off convincingly. Lou Ferrigno, despite not being as brawny as the comic book character (and who is?), nevertheless did it well. The CGI character in this movie, not so much.
In fact, the CGI is the main killer for this movie. On its own, it's not convincing at all. There are almost no scenes in which you're not aware that you're looking at a video game character interacting with normal humans. The result is that the movie ends up looking like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" crossed with an X Box game.
Whoever designed the Hulk obviously never heard that less is more. A hulk larger than any living bodybuilder would have been fine, but this is one gigantic, over-detailed brute. If motion-tracking technology was used, it didn't show up in the final product. This Hulk moves awkwardly, at times much too fast considering his bulk. His skin is ridiculously over-detailed, as if the producers were afraid anything less would result in a plastic-y look. The result is that the Hulk looks like he's got the world's worst skin rash or something. Muscle striations are visible everywhere except the Hulk's eyeballs, and his overall size is just WAY overdone, like some homoerotic bodybuilder fantasy.
Poor CGI also afflicts things like helicopters and other vehicles, which is puzzling considering people have been doing these things for years now.
That leaves us with story, and unfortunately, the old "the army wants to turn me into a weapon" trope is getting really, really, really tired now. Some ingenuity might infuse fresh blood into this idea, but you won't find it here. The baddies are about as subtle as a fart in an elevator. One ends up wishing that the Cigarette Smoking Man from "The X Files" would show up to concoct some devious, shrewd plan to capture Bruce Banner. But no, we go full-out tanks-and-troops. And the less said about Blonsky, the better. It's all might and no brains. There are no surprises in this movie, only the assurance that you can see the next turn of the plot in this movie coming a mile away.
Norton does a serviceable job as Banner, but you can tell that even he knows that this is a paint-by-numbers plot. Overall it's just old, tired and overblown. Adam West's Batman reached the same level of camp, except that the producers of that show did it intentionally and with gusto.