First, it should be noted that Hancock is a wicked idea for a movie. The notion of doing a deconstructionist superhero film featuring a drunk and embittered Superman figure is ripe with the potential for dramatics and humour while offering another great opportunity to show off effects-heavy action sequences that bring the house down. And hiring Will Smith to play the titular curmudgeon with super-powers constitutes one of the best casting moves you can make because Smith owns the summer tentpole, while at the same time being an exceptional actor with ample charm. If anyone can make you love a proverbial @$$hole (as Hancock is called repeatedly) despite his faults, it’s Big Willie Styles.

Unfortunately, either the creative juice petered out some point along the scripting process or there just wasn’t enough to the concept to begin with. If it weren’t for the film’s bright ambitions, it would just be painfully average, but instead I’ll have to indict it as a failure, not a spectacular failure, but a failure nonetheless. What you get is about half an hour of really good movie, followed by an hour of listless searching for the rest of the story and what once was novel becomes swiftly banal.

Hancock spends most of that first part of the film as an abusive alcoholic that callously goes about saving the city despite the repercussions to people or personal property. A simple freeway shoot out ends up costing Los Angeles $9 million in damages and causes city officials to demand that something be done about the so-called superhero. Then, Hancock rescues a grateful citizen for once. Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), the world’s last altruistic PR man, takes it upon himself to revamp Hancock’s image; first by encouraging him to go to prison and then giving him a spanking new uniform for when the police chief calls for help, and he does.

Aside from the fact that the story goes downhill after Hancock’s heroic post-jail takedown of a group of high tech bank robbers, the advertisers at Sony Pictures are largely responsible for my non-enjoyment of Hancock. The night before I saw the film, I caught a TV commercial which reveal that Charlize Theron’s character, Ray’s wife Mary, was also a super-powered individual. I don’t think this is a spoiler anymore, and certainly when you see the movie, the writing’s on the wall. Why would an Academy Award winning actress take up the mere mortal role of an ordinary housewife after all?

Hancock and Mary’s origins are stupendously convoluted. They weren’t aliens from another planet, they didn’t fall in radioactive liquid, they’re just immortals of old – the last of their kind. What the hell kind of origin is that? Hancock’s walking around with amnesia for 80 years, the first thing he remembers is waking up in a Miami Hospital in 1928. Mary knows all about this because when two immortals fall in love, their proximity starts to make them human. He saved her and got injured, so she left him to keep him safe and allow him to heal.

The whole thing is messed up. I didn’t buy it and I got the sense that nobody else was buying it either. And from that turn, the film scrambles to find the emotional centre again but instead it just feels false. The entire climax, which involves some villains trying to get revenge on a weakened Hancock, was thoroughly not engaging and without any real menace or sense of danger. Director Peter Berg’s attempt at creating a documentary feel really hits a wall here, as the big superhero movie seems more like a medical drama than a comic book brawl.

But maybe part of the problem is that Hancock, as a script, has been kicking around Hollywood for too long to feel significantly original. Originally It was called Tonight, He Comes and was written by Vincent Ngo over a decade ago (the screenplay was fleshed out by X-Files vet Vince Gilligan). If it had been made all those ten year ago, before the boom of comic book movies, I think the tone would have been easier to establish and the film would have felt more fresh. It wouldn’t have been in competition with Iron Man or The Dark Knight and could instead be a true homage.

In the end though it is watchable – if only for Smith oddly charismatic grouch (in a Dr. House sort of way) and for Bateman’s restrained exasperation (as perfected on Arrested Development, which better be really coming out as a movie soon, like the whole cast is teasing.) I have no doubt Hancock will be success. After all, it’s Will Smith on the Fourth of July, but knowing that in advanced, I wished they’d put the onus on making a better vehicle for him.