Anime Forum Games Links Movies Music Profiles Survivor TV Shows The Hulk joins other Marvel comics as it ventures into the realm of movies. While Spider-Man and X2 were great examples of a comic becoming a good movie. The Hulk joins Daredevil as an example of how not to do a movie based on a comic. The movie starts off as David Banner tries to come up with a serum of sorts to make a super human. Atleast I think that's what he is trying to make. Anyway, he ends up testing it on himself and later his wife reveals she is with child and his worst fears are brought to life when the child is born. It seems the serum infected his DNA coding and while fathering this child, the child picked up the serum in his DNA. David Banner becomes angry and that's when the movie goes into the present day where Bruce Banner is working on a project similar to his fathers yet he knows nothing about his past. When hit by a gamma ray during a freak accident, Bruce finds out that when he becomes angry, he goes through a change unlike any other. He becomes, The Hulk. Now, the story is good but the problem is that it delivers mostly talk and character development and barely any action, which is pretty much expected from a comic based movie. Ang Lee, best known to American movie goers for directing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Ang Lee brings his own style to the film and it's most noticable during the comic-esq moments where the screen is filled just like a comic book. This is a neat aspect of the film. However, rest of the film feels like he didn't know where to take the film. The action is few and far between. about one hour and 45 minutes of the movie is action free, giving about 30 minutes of action, which really isn't that entertaining. When I first saw what the Hulk looked like in the trailer, I swore it to be the worst CGI I had ever seen. Well, I can safely say it isn't. The Hulk does look kinda like Gumby on steroids but it has a comic-ish feel to it. The problem with the CGI is that the giant dogs look like they are made out of putty and the big bad at the end is hard to makeout, as are a number of other special effects during that sequence. The Hulks biggest downfall is it's acting. Eric Bana, who was in Black Hawk Down, stars as Bruce Banner. He does play the emotionless Banner well, my problem is that his acting comes off as hollow and forced at times. The same can be said of the female lead, Betty Ross, played by Jennifer Connelly. Nick Nolte gives a decent performance as David Banner. There are a few outstanding things about the film. Danny Elfman gives yet another great score, almost on par with his work on Spider-Man. There are also a couple of cameos that fans of the comic and television series will love. Fans of the comic will also enjoy the fact that Ang Lee tried to deliver a film that was about emotions but like I said earlier, the acting kinda hurts that aspect of the movie. In the end I felt cheated. I went in expecting a fun comic romp but ended up getting nothing but talk. The final battle is so anti-climatic that it isn't even funny. Should you avoid The Hulk? Well, it really depends. True fans of the comic will love how it captures the emotion of bruce banner but the casual movie goer will be annoyed by the lack of action. As it is, The Hulk is a so-so comic movie and perhaps if the trailers hadn't played it off as a action romp then I would have been able to enjoy it for what it was worth. But as I see it, The Hulk is better left alone 'til it hits video this fall. Score: D+ Reviewed by: Americanpieflute Reviewed on June 28th 2003