When I learned that director Ang Lee was signing on to direct the silver screen adaptation of Marvel Comics' The Hulk, I'll admit I expected (and hoped) that he would bring an heir of legitimacy back to the superhero genre. With vacuous and nearly brain-dead films like Daredevil and Spider-Man grossing hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, an extremely successful and cerebral summer movie could have sent the studios on a path to make the next smart hit. Putting the cart of optimism well in front of the horse though, Lee's Hulk was doomed from the start as the source material (or at least, the source material Lee created for the film) was flawed from the beginning. With this in mind, it shouldn't come as any surprise that Hulk is now being looked upon as one of the biggest summer disasters since The Cable Guy.

Mild-mannered Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) is a brilliant young scientist working in Berkeley at a nuclear laboratory. He and his colleagues, including ex-girlfriend Betty (Jennifer Connelly) are bombarding different lab animals with uncommon wavelengths to see what the result will be. When Banner accidentally steps into the testing chamber and is hit with a shower of gamma rays, it unleashing his inner Hulk. Banner's Hulk is basically a big, green Id that grunts a lot and smashes things; comparing the Hulk to a 15-foot tall Homer Simpson isn't that bad of a characterization.

If the plot description sounds a little off and a tad dry, it's because the plot is a little off and a tad dry. If it sounds like the Hulk is far more manic-depressive than he is a superhero, it's because he is. There is no super villain spreading his form of meglamania whom Hulk is trying to defeat, ala Lex Luther or the Joker. This could be rationalized if the focus of the film was solely on Banner's attempts to control his alter-ego (which he never can), but this is hardly the major focus of the movie, especially with Lee devoting a sizeable chunk of screen time to Colonel Talbot (Josh Lucas) and his attempts to weaponize Hulk.

But from this answer comes the question: what was the major focus of Hulk? The movie's major problem is simply that there isn't one. By including Banner's recurring dreams, his relationship with Betty, Betty's relationship with her father (Sam Elliott), Banner's strange family history and his complete lack of control of the appearance of Hulk (Hulk appears when Banner gets extremely angry), this film morphs into a veritable month-in-the-life film about a man whose inner dark side materializes in the form of an anything but jolly green giant intent on wreaking his own very deadly form of havoc.

In itself, this is a noble and refreshingly original perspective to take when dealing with story material that originated in a comic book and developed a cult following as a super hero television series in the '70's. However noble and original Lee's vision though, it doesn't translate to anything worth seeing; the complete lack of any kind of payoff or resolution can have that effect on a viewer.

The Hulk looks good on screen; the combination of CGI and live-action plates is first rate (the lighting of the digital Hulk almost always matches the background plates, which isn't often seen), but in the end this is of little use in a dreadfully action-thin story line. Hopefully, Lee and company will take the long and very drawn out back story they've delivered here in Hulk and supplement that with a real plot in the already-in-the-works sequel.