A Hulk with a Heart

"Aww, he's SO SWEET!" Is not a likely (or probably even an intended) reaction to The Incredible Hulk, who, incredible or not, is, ultimately, a hulk. But what a hulk! I was dragged thither to the cinema against my will because superhero films aren't really my trunk of marbles. When they take themselves seriously I find them pretentious in the extreme and when they don't take themselves seriously I find them silly in the extreme. Occasionally I can put my brain on ice for a couple of hours if James Marsters or Christian Bale are buffed up, but let's face it, in those cases it isn't the film that I'm enjoying.

"The Incredible Hulk" differs enormously. For one thing, the hero has to ask the love interest for his bus fare, which prompted the above exclaimation to the grave embarrassment of Monkey. Also, the hero/love interest relationship is just nothing short of adorable. There is a real heart to the film, until you are genuinely involved in the plot, such as it is, about the search for a cure. Maybe what makes it different is that the superhero power is a curse he's trying to rid himself of, rather than flaunting it. (Dear Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, if you want normal lives so badly, for fuck's sake stop dressing up and running around your respective cities mouthing off. Yours, Cordelia).

Of course, the last 20 minutes or so goes superhero film and there's gratuitous banging of CGI skulls into pavements and it all gets rather loud and disinteresting, but for the best of two hours it had me on a plate. It helps that it had Ed Norton in the lead, an actor not given to silliness as a rule, and it helped that Tim Roth was the bad guy, another actor for whom vainglory is not an associated vice. Liv Tyler battled against a horrible hair cut to deliver an extremely sympathetic take on the usually wholly unsympathetic role of love interest. In fact, I would recommend it as a date movie. It's really very unconventionally romantic. And very sweet.