Star rating: **
Dir: Peter Berg
With: Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman

TROUBLED superheroes are as much a staple of cinema as femmes fatales and maverick cops. In Hancock, Will Smith plays the daddy of all dark and dysfunctional knights - a surly alcoholic who hates the company of others. If anyone can rise to such an occasion, it's surely Smith, Mr Congeniality himself? Afraid not. Hancock is a half-baked curiosity, a rare turkey from Smith to go in the pen beside Wild Wild West.

The usual superhero career path is to go from affable nobody to loved but feared demigod. Hancock starts off unlikeable and goes downhill from there. The drinking is a nice touch - superbeing floored by man's everyday poison, etc - but the effects on Hancock are anything but appealing. It might have a commendable salute to reality to have the character as a bitter, depressed soak, but it's not exactly what you'd call showing the audience a good time. Even when Hancock does a noble deed, like save someone's life, the havoc he creates makes the LA crowd turn on him. And vice versa. "I've been drinking, bitch," he says to one onlooker. We're a long way from Hitch territory.

The man Hancock rescues turns out to be a PR agent who offers to clean up the superhero's act. Ray (Jason Bateman) is married to Mary (a miscast Charlize Theron) who, oddly enough, takes an instant dislike to Hancock.

It takes forever for Peter Berg (The Kingdom) to get his tale on track. All the while the tone bucks and shifts from dark to light, action to comedy, dull to occasionally inspired. And still Smith is not allowed to do his crowd-pleasing thing. "I'm not the most charming guy in the world," his character tells Ray. But charming is what Smith does better than anyone, and if the script had allowed his character to transform himself earlier the movie might have stood more of a chance.

Instead, just when Smith finally gets to play nice, along comes a plot twist that allows Berg to blow up lots of things, including whatever sense remains in the story.

This is Fourth of July weekend in the States, otherwise known as Will Smith Storms the Box Office season. Though Hancock will doubtless open well, this is one superhero film that will be flying off to DVD-land faster than a speeding bullet.