If memory serves, the angry green Marvel Comics superhero who is the subject of Ang Lee's new movie used to be known as the Incredible Hulk. At some point, though, he shed that defining adjective, and the film, which opens today nationwide, is just called "The Hulk." It might be described, in any case, as incredible, but only in a negative sense: incredibly long, incredibly tedious, incredibly turgid. As for the grumpy green giant himself, I'm sorry to say that he is not very credible at all.
David Edelstein of Slate also gets his digs in early and often:
That's not to say that Hulk—or the $150 million blockbuster built around him—isn't a fascinating piece of work. I couldn't take my eyes off it. As the heroine of Ghost World (2001) might put it, it's often so bad it's almost good, but then it's so bad it goes past good and back to bad again. It's certainly serious—deadly serious. Little could I have predicted when, as a boy, I pored over the fun comic or watched the cartoon show that one day art-film eggheads like Lee and his longtime producer/writer James Schamus would bring their vaunted intellects to the project … and come up with something akin to a Sam Shepard rewrite of an old Japanese giant monster picture.
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