Hancock

The New Yorker David Denby

Hancock suggests new visual directions and emotional tonalities for pop. It's by far the most enjoyable big movie of the summer.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

A rollicking tale of rehabilitation and redemption, rife with cool special effects, Hancock is smart and surprisingly raunchy.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Tasha Robinson

It's a daring, even mildly challenging mixture for a superhero film, and while the pieces don't entirely add up, the puzzle is at least original.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

One of the rare action films that needed to be longer. Then changes in mood wouldn't be so abrupt, and director Peter Berg and writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan would've had more time to reveal things we want to know.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Bateman doesn't make a false move, and a stellar Charlize Theron springs her own bolts from the blue as Ray's wife. As for Smith, he's on fire. There's nothing like a star shining on his highest beams. You follow him anywhere.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Hancock is a lot of fun, if perhaps a little top-heavy with stuff being destroyed. Smith makes the character more subtle than he has to be, more filled with self-doubt, more willing to learn.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The real hit of the movie is the hilarious Bateman. His low-key humor makes you wish Hancock could have saved Bateman's short-lived sitcom "Arrested Development." Now that would have been heroic.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Hancock makes for one unexpectedly satisfying and kinky addition to Hollywood's superhero chronicles. Touching and odd, laden with genuine twists and grounded by three appealing lead performances.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

As popcorn movies go, this is fleet, funny, and even thoughtful: its central question, nicely underplayed by director Peter Berg, is why power and altruism never seem to intersect.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

In a film marketplace where even the best superhero movies tend to do a lot of the same stuff, I really admire Will Smith and bad-boy director Peter Berg for trying something different.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The first half is diverting and inventive. But the filmmakers use the second half as a box-office insurance policy. They fill it with the conventional super-heroics and heartbreak that they spend the first 45 minutes gleefully deconstructing.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

The script doesn't always find the most effective way to the heart of the conflicts and Berg struggles to balance the mix of tones and the conflicts of man and superman, but he never sacrifices the integrity of his characters or their relationships for an easy ending. That alone makes Hancock the most adult of the new wave of superhero dramas.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The promise is dangled yet never developed. Rather, the narrative slips into a backstory that alternates between confusing and contradictory.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Sometimes funny, sometimes clever, and occasionally involving, but it's never brilliant and its edge is compromised by the neutering that accompanies the teen-friendly PG-13 rating.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Hancock is just intriguing enough that I kept wishing it were better. But Berg doesn't have the subtle touch that this material needs.

The Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber

The visual effects are stellar, but the true star is Smith, who again demonstrates acting chops as well as effortless charisma in a vehicle that's only occasionally worthy of his superhuman skills.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Doesn't seem to quite know what it is or where it's headed. So it goes anywhere it can while treading thematic water.

Empire Kim Newman

See-saws between straight superhero movie and parody, with layers of soap-opera fudge in between. A lot of solid scenes - but Hancock lacks the power of super-coherence.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Hancock can revel in schmuckery, of course, because you and I and cute kids and peaceful oldies worldwide know in advance that there's no way on Hollywood's green earth Will Smith will ever play someone seriously, dangerously unsavory.

Time Richard Corliss

It's strenuous, smartly-made and ordinary to an extraordinary degree.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

More intelligent than most summer blockbusters and features at its center a thought-out and committed performance by Will Smith. But in the end it's merely ALMOST good.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The result is an inconsistent, incoherent anti-superhero action-adventure comedy.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

Starts off promisingly, but gets bogged down when it abandons humor for gravity.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Once the vulgar comedy dissipates, we're left with poorly photographed, bullet-riddled summer-action mayhem. The only thing drunker than Hancock is the editing and camerawork.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Might have been more appropriately titled "Hodgepodge." What starts out with a sense of quirky fun loses direction and devolves into a mishmash of story lines.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

What begins as a pretty good comedy devolves rapidly into a high-flown example of Hollywood messagemongering.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It's a strange feeling to see the summer's most promising premise self-destruct into something bizarre and unsatisfying, but that is the Hancock experience.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

There's a great idea here, but it's buried within a muddled story that lurches between dark comedy and maudlin drama.

Slate Dana Stevens

The climax, a multipart showdown in the corridors of a hospital, is unforgivably manipulative. What self-respecting director still cuts away to shots of a heartbeat monitor flat-lining? Hancock isn't the only underachiever on the premises--the talented Berg settles for far less than he should.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

It doesn't take itself as seriously as it should, and undercuts a final act that should have and so could have packed a mighty emotional wallop.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

This movie fails so spectacularly - and on so many levels - that it's like watching a train plummet off a bridge.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Not even Smith's charisma can mitigate the chaos that is Hancock.

Newsweek David Ansen

The superhero genre screams for a makeover, or at least a smart deconstruction, but Hancock isn't that movie. It just ups the foolishness ante.

Variety Todd McCarthy

The effects are snazzy, even if they pass by quite quickly, and there's enough going on to keep audiences watching, if not entirely happy. Smith, Theron and Bateman capably handle the main roles, but such is the skimpiness of the scenario that no further characters make any impact.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The problem is that director Peter Berg, aided and abetted by Smith and Theron and third banana Jason Bateman, seem to have made it literally, not realizing its out-of-whack tonalities and grotesque plot twists were meant to be played for laughs.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A godforsaken (possibly literally) mess.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Any notions of demolishing black stereotypes -- and what else could have possessed Mr. Smith to do this? -- are dashed by the coarseness of it all, and by the narrative incoherence; a surprising plot twist turns a sloppy action-comedy into a totally different movie, and an even worse one.