Hancock is the superhero nobody likes. Oh, he can fly; his chest does repel point-blank bullets. And he saves people, averts catastrophe, stops bad guys from doing bad things. But Hancock has a personality defect: he’s a horrible human being/deity. He guzzles way too much Royal Crown, which puts him in a perpetually bad mood and interferes with his self-aviation skills — the man is a drunk flyer. (And then he lands so hard on a street, he digs a ditch in the asphalt.) He wrecks everything he touches. When he’s finished a mission, all of L.A. has become collateral damage. Once Hancock was summoned to the aid of a whale that had washed up on the beach. When he lifted the creature by its tail and tossed it back in the sea, it landed on a distant ship. “I don’t remember that,” he says to somebody, who replies, “Greenpeace does.” (more…)

There’s some idea out there in the world that Will Smith “owns” the July 4 holiday weekend in terms of box office. I guess this is because of “Independence Day,” one of my favorite movies, and “Men In Black,” also quite good, released, respectively, in 1996 and 1997 on that weekend.

Alas, all good hype must come to an end. “Hancock,” with which Sony is hoping to have a merry July 4, 2008, may not duplicate Smith’s previous successes. It is one of the worst family holiday weekend releases of recent memory — and jaw-droppingly so. And that’s hard to do since it clocks in at a mere wisp of one hour and 20 minutes. (more…)

Will Smith’s powers are even more extraordinary than those of a caped crusader who can leap way beyond the tallest buildings in a single bound.

Smith has salvaged many vehicles more threadbare than “Hancock,” and though his latest venture is decidedly uneven, he seems poised to score yet another supervictory at the box office when it opens July 2. The Columbia Pictures release is a good showcase for him — and for co-stars Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman. Imagine the heights they all could have scaled if the picture had been really good. (more…)

Since 1776, the Fourth of July has meant three things: barbecues, three-day weekends, and inexplicably enormous box-office receipts for Will Smith sci-fi vehicles of varying quality. Over the years, Smith’s Independence Day–related bankability has proven so infallible that Columbia Pictures probably didn’t think twice about giving the go-ahead for Hancock — his new presumed blockbuster (budgeted at $150 million) about a drunk superhero who gets saved by a kindly publicist — as long as director Peter Berg could have it ready for release next weekend. Could this inane decision really have been as stupid as it sounds? Maybe! The first reviews for Hancock are in, and they’re not very good! (more…)