Tagline: “Meet the hero everybody loves to hate.â€
Translation: Including audiences and critics, we bet.
The Verdict: Will Smith may be the reigning box-office king of depressing, large-budget apocalypse movies, but doesn’t something about this new one seem a little too bleak for popular consumption? Inexplicably tipped by EW to be the third-highest-grossing film of the summer, Hancock follows the wacky (sad?) misadventures of an alcoholic, self-destructive superhero who destroys public property and endangers children before being saved by a publicist, of all people. Sure, it looks hilarious to us, but is dark humor what moviegoers want on Fourth of July weekend? Doesn’t this seem obviously destined to lose tons of money? Also, as we’ve asked before, how the heck can a superhero with (presumably) superhuman liver function get drunk in the first place?