Who doesn’t enjoy reviews? Who doesn’t love to pick up the newspaper and see the columns of exhaustive, heartfelt, intellectual analysis of our favorite films? And who, really, bothers to read the entirety of any of these things? There’s a reason that the entire review can be summed up by a combination of the first and last sentences, and — in case you’re not even interested enough to digest more than fifty words — by arcane symbols like thumbs or stars or movie reels or dollar signs or something.

But since I couldn’t come up with a rating system that hasn’t already been done, done again, copyrighted and trademarked, I’ve decided to dedicate exactly the same amount of time to reviewing things that I dedicate to actually thinking about them. And so I offer the Ten Minute Review –conceived, written and delivered in ten minutes flat.

I used to spend a lot of times in comic book stores. I figure this is to answer for a number of my personality defects, but it was as good a place as any to pass my time while my mother was grocery shopping, and in retrospect I’m happier that I ended up learning about Mr. Fantastic and Ghost Rider at the comic book store than learning about smoking and oral sex at the coffee shop farther down the plaza.

I could spend hours there. Those of you who might lose yourselves in book stores for a couple of days might understand the appeal — there’s something exceedingly quiet and exciting about browsing through shelves of books, reading spines and flipping through pages. With comics it’s almost exactly the same, except usually with a tinny stereo playing shitty rock music in the background, and perhaps an argument between the clerk and a customer on which back issues of Alpha Flight should be burned where they sit, or how much a Patrick Roy rookie card should sell for.

Above: Wolverine and Hulk engage in a profound philosphical debate based strongly in Descartes and the legacy of mind/body dualism. Not Pictured: Wolverine illustrating his point of the localization of cerebral function by driving his claws through the Hulk’s brain.

I used to browse endlessly, looking up and down the shelves at the various superhero titles and all the alternative comics about sex and coffee shops for the people who had grown to spite the superhero titles. Comic books advertise themselves with their covers, often depicting scenes that are far more cool than anything that actually happens within them, always using artwork that’s far superior to what’s on the pages. Browsing comics is a mute riot of promises, and purchasing them usually develops into a hierarchy. Specifically, comics that are:

  1. Regularly collected, and therefore purchased sight unseen,
  2. Related to regularly collected series, meriting an occasional cover glance,
  3. Not collected, read on the shelf, and left behind in tattered, sticky ruins.

Comic book store owners would like to discourage you from doing this, but in their hearts they can’d deny that they do it too. When the lights go out and the door locks and the twenty-sided dice come out, they’re doing it too — they’re reading all the comics and putting them back on the shelf: The Namors and the Captain Americas and the Catwomans and the Teen JLAs; the shit that they wouldn’t buy any sooner than you would. They scowl at you, but they know.

When you pick up The Incredible Hulk, they know. Hulk is one of those books, where the cover art is pretty cool because it’s got the Hulk smashing the shit out of something or fighting with a Yeti in space or whatever, but when you look inside it’s like it was drawn in the 1970s, and there are forty pages of dialogue about schizophrenia. Picking up an issue of The Incredible Hulk is like crouching in an alley with a bunch of strangers and throwing dice with them — your odds aren’t that good, and even when you win you’re not sure it was worth it.

Ang Lee’s Hulk is exactly the same way. It brings to light everything that is both good and bad about the idea of the Incredible Hulk, all those elements which come together to elevate the character and tear it down, which can be summarized in two words:

Hulk smash.

That’s basically it. When you boil down the Hulk, that’s what people are paying to see — they want to watch a big green muscled guy wreck the stuff, people or geography that gets in his way. Whatever backstory you tack onto it is great and all, but it should serve really only as a vehicle for large green men lifting heavy things and destroying other things with them. If it doesn’t, well, then there’s something missing.

Writers for the Hulk never understand this, thinking that perhaps what their pubescent-to-middle-teenaged audience really want is a probing series of insights into the dichotomy of human nature and the vast inner conflict between man’s primal urges and his drive for civilization. I’m not sure what kinds of high schools those writers went to, but I’d love to know how they discussed their spare-time reading.

Student #1: Holy shit, did you read the last issue of The Hulk?
Student #2: Yeah, what the hell was that? Someone dies of cancer or something? Who fucking cares?
Student #3: But what a fascinating metaphor of Bruce Banner’s own condition — an inner torment that is both powerful and completely unstoppable — and a fascinating antithesis to the Hulk’s strength, in that there are still some things that even the most powerful superheroes cannot contain.
Student #1: You’re right, that’s intriguing, and I– GET HIM!
Sirens wail in the background as EMTs arrive and attempt to resucitate Student #3.

“Hi, I’m Jennifer Connelly. Sure, you may remember me as the Hot Chick With The Great Rack in Career Opportunities, but as I’ve demonstrated lately, I’m also the Hot Chick With The Great Rack And Limitless Compassion Who Supports Tortured Scientists, like in A Beautiful Mind and Hulk. Look for me next as The Hot Chick With The Great Rack Who Is A Tortured Scientist in The Marie Curie Story, coming to a theatre near you.”

With this kind of pedigree, it’s really no surprise that Ang Lee’s Hulk should be something of a confused effort, and it is. Eric Bana stars as a Bruce Banner who is unaware of more than just his green-skilled alter ego, an unwitting victim of his father (Nick Nolte) and the on-again-but-mostly-off boyfriend of Jennifer Connelly’s Betty Ross, daughter of Sam Elliott’s General Ross, the one-time nemesis of Bruce’s father. If you’re having a hard time following, then you’ll probably want to load up on the brain food, because this is just the origin story — there’re plenty more odd touches and turns on the way through the movie that are just waiting to throw you off. Hulk alternates so heavily between heartfelt dialogue and euphoric violence that it’s hard to know how you’re supposed to feel.

On the one hand, Lee very capably engages the audience in Banner’s turmoil as a damaged, withdrawn and pained individual, pining for a woman who already has enough baggage of her own. On the other, he leaps into delerious, colorful action sequences that are equal to or better than any of the other superhero movies out there, despite some CGI that seems suspect. The question he seems to be asking is the same one that the comics have been asking for a long time — specifically, what the hell do you people want from the Hulk?

Is he a modern fusion of Frankenstein and Mr. Hyde, a complex symbol of schizophrenia and inner turmoil? Or is he just a lot of fun to watch while he slaps missiles out of the way and smashes M1-A1 tanks with other M1-A1 tanks? And can you squeeze both into a movie at the same time?

The answer is yes, but not comfortably. Eric Bana handles himself well as Bruce Banner, and Jennifer Connelly is ideal as a woman so breathtaking that she alone could bring Hulk’s rampage to its knees. The Hulk himself looks occasionally like Shrek on Creatine, and occasionally like an extremely large man who can blow stuff up by punching it. When the movie focuses on the characters or the action exclusively, it moves quickly and easily entertains; when it tries to bring the two up against each other, it feels weird and forced, as if the two cannot easily coexist.

Who knows? Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps Ang Lee is so subtle that the entire movie is an exercise in split personality, showing us, the summer movie-going audience, how wide the gap is between thoughtful characters and brainless computer-animated action. It could be that we shouldn’t be taking collectable cups and giant foam hands away from Hulk, but rather a deeper understanding of ourselves and how we relate to summer movies.

If that kind of cinematic navel-gazing is just what you’ve been waiting for, then smash — don’t walk — to see Hulk. It’s the most intricate comic book movie that you’ll ever see, if what you’re looking for from a comic book movie is intricacy. Fans of the comic will probably love the gravity lent to the subject matter, and literature majors will cream themselves at the opportunity to debate all of the allusions, references and themes that Ang Lee tries to bring forward.

Otherwise? If you’re anyone else? Yeah, there’s a good chance you’ll get the feeling you’re seeing Daredevil again. Yes, even if you didn’t see it the first time around.