Hancock

If you believe the trailer, then Hancock is your typical Will Smith comedy about a drunken super-hero who foils bank robberies, throws whales at yachts and then gets himself a PR agent in order to help stop everyone from hating him. It's essentially Hitch with Superpowers. And for 40 minutes or so, that's exactly what Hancock is - and it's loads of fun.

Then at 40 minutes in the 'plot twist' happens, and it goes from being Super-Hitch, to 'In Pursuit of Heroes', and steadily goes down hill from there. Instead of being that fun, knock about romp, it tries to shoe-horn in a sub-plot about immortality, the nature of heroism and the idea of superheroes as modern day gods/mythic heroes. Now, I don't have a problem with them doing that, as it's a really interesting idea and the is the kind of idea that makes comics like Powers, Astro City and anything by Neil Gaiman really interesting. However I don't want that from a film that stars the Fresh Prince of Bel Air!

Apparently, this second half is left over from the original script which focused on the darker elements of the superhero story. However that was before several years in development hell and several re-writes gave us this bi-polar version of a once interesting idea. If only the Hollywood big-wigs could have not interfered and left Hancock to be either the knock about fun film it pretended to be (and if Ironman has shown us anything, those films can be a success) or had decided to make it into the darker, more edgy movie that the original script supposedly offered us. Instead, you get two halves of a good film and in the end those two halves, do not make a good whole.