Hancock's script was already kicking around Hollywood when Will Smith was still the Fresh Prince. In the grandest Hollywood tradition ("If they like something once, they'll like it a billion times"), it finally hits the screen in a summer packed to the gills with superhero movies. To stand out, Hancock goes for novelty over special effects, casting Earth's Biggest Movie Star (Will Smith, naturally) as a drunken, antisocial shlub with unaccountable superpowers. Despised by the public at large - he causes million in damage while foiling a robbery - he nevertheless saves the life of idealistic PR man Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), who makes it his personal mission to give Hancock a much-needed image makeover.

This setup should be enough for one movie, but the screenplay has taken on a patchwork quality over the years. On the one hand, it's unashamedly vulgar, with comic dismemberment and ample profanity (a certain seven-letter insult is practically the film's catchphrase). But it's a strangely joyless vulgarity, thanks largely to director Peter Berg's insistence on gritty versimilitude (read: shaking the camera a lot), and the second half brings in a gap-riddled twist and weepy histrionics from Smith and Charlize Theron (as Ray's wife). Major characters and incidents are given short shrift in the rush towards the hoary conclusion: the villain, for example, has just two scenes before the big finale.

Hancock mainly coasts on the strength of its star, who is never surly enough to alienate - and his transition to conventional superhero (with the usual appeals to fate and destiny) is less interesting for it. And while Smith is enough to ensure a fat profit even amidst a crowded field, those burned out on Hulk, Iron Man, Batman and the rest might wish the film had more to distiguish it than mood swings and 'attitude'.