““Hancock” felt entirely too written. A good film, of course, is written eloquently well – so well, in fact, that you forget it’s written. A hackneyed story feels forcefully written.”

I agree entirely with your review, but I just think that rather than it being over-written or “too written”, it’s just written badly. There are a lot of things in the script that seem to have been put there as a place-holder for contiguity with superhero movies that just don’t work at all.

The film didn’t really need to have the whole antagonist twist in it, because it just didn’t work and felt like it was in there for the sake of there being a bad guy. If it was rather, more focused upon Hancock himself and had a more believable turn-around story, it’d actually be palatable as a film, providing it kept all the worthless and unrequited side-plots and the unnecessary humour elements to a very bare, almost non-existent minimum.

Hancock himself wasn’t that bad of a character, he was actually quite a change, but because he is so barely even reflected upon it is frustrating that rather than focus on the reflective, sombre loner and his difficulty adjusting and acknowledging his humanity, we just see so many short-stops which end with smack-talking and stupid “tough guy” comedy moments which drive me crazy.

In I-Robot, he tries too hard to be serious and ends up just looking silly, trying to keep the same facial expressions each time he’s between scenes. At least in this film he had somewhat more of a range, but he needs to actually stop “acting” and start acting. If he was more believable in the role, rather than him being at differing levels of street-smarts and “cool”, then maybe he’d be worth considering for a similar role, but then again… who would want to try this again considering the fallout.

I know there are sparks of talent with Smith because he has an intuitiveness to him that is somewhat unique, but this horrible script and execution did it no favours.