It's fourth of July weekend and that means Will Smith is back in theaters. This time the world's biggest box office draw is playing a drunken superhero with a major image problem in Hancock. Directed by Peter Berg, Hancock is not your typical Will Smith movie. Playing against type as a charisma free jerk, Will Smith is still funny and fun to watch but also slightly off.

Laying on a bus bench in Los Angeles, with liquor bottles laying at his feet, Hancock (Smith) looks like a homeless guy. However, he happens to be a superhero who makes it his business to get the bad guys and protect the innocent, regardless of the damage he does along the way. Hancock causes as much or more destruction saving lives and protecting property as the bad guys do committing their crimes.

No wonder then that the people of LA despise their superhero savior. Media savvy image consultant Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) decides he will try and change that negative image. Hancock rescued Ray when his car became trapped on railroad tracks with a train bearing down. Naturally, Hancock stopping the train may have saved Ray's life but derailing the train damaged hundreds of other cars and will no doubt cost millions in clean up and other such costs.

Atleast Ray is grateful, he even invites Hancock home for dinner with his family, wife Mary (Charlize Theron) and son Aaron (Jae Head). Mary is exceptionally uncomfortable around Hancock while Aaron is the rare kid who see's Hancock as a hero. Ray makes it his goal to turn Hancock from a pariah into a hero by making people miss him. The plan involves Hancock actually going to jail for all of his destructive behavior before being sprung by the very people who put him away after they realize how much they need his help. 

Meanwhile, Mary is holding back something she knows about Hancock; a revelation that eventually becomes an important bit of plot. But the less said about that the better.   

Anyone who has read the Watchmen comics or saw Pixar's The Incredibles will recognize elements of each that combine to create Hancock. Alan Moore's Watchman series with it's jaundiced view of flawed, failing heroes no doubt informs Hancock's flawed alcoholic act. Fans of the Incredibles on the other hand will recognize a major plot point of that film where heroes were forced to give up saving the world from evil after being sued too often and blamed for the damage caused in their effort to serve and protect.

Hancock is nowhere near as special as its influences but with a terrific cast it manages to be consistently entertaining. Smith, playing against type as a charisma free jerk, manages a star performance unlike any he has delivered before. I particularly enjoyed the way Hancock dealt with his anger in ways only a superhero could.

When it comes to bringing the funny in Hancock Jason Bateman is the comic relief. Bateman's non-plussed facial reactions and wry comments on Hancock's brutish behavior are terrifically timed and quite reminiscent of his wonderfully sly Arrested Development character Michael Bluth whose constant astonishment at the depths of his family's ruthlessness was one of the great running gags in TV history.

In an interesting coincidence it was during Arrested Development that Bateman first met and sparked great chemistry with Charlize Theron. Now Theron and Bateman are together again and the chemistry remains strong. Theron's Mary is unfortunately underwritten and suffers from a mid-movie twist that seems to exist only to justify hiring an Oscar winning actress such as Ms. Theron. 

Still, despite the way Theron's Mary is treated by the plot, Theron sparks with Bateman and in a different way with Will Smith. Though you will find the plot hard to believe, Theron's penetrating gaze aimed in Smith's direction communicates a great deal of emotion without words because Ms. Theron is such a terrific actress. Unfortunately, by the fifth time she stands and stares Hancock down, you will want to scream at the screen for her to just say what she is thinking already. 

Hancock is entertaining and involving if more than a little uneven and lacking in depth. There are a wealth of possibilities for a story such as this but with little care for creating believable back stories, or as the comics call'em, origin stories for the hero and his various nemeses, Hancock becomes merely a series of well planned effects and stunts and not much more.

Those effects and stunts are fun but not entirely satisfying and thus Hancock is only good and not quite great.

There are three different movies going amidst the chaos of the new comedy Drillbit Taylor. One is a retreaming of producer Judd Apatow and his writer pal Seth Rogan and their style of raunchy, genital based humor. Another is an Owen Wilson movie starring Wilson in his usual charming rogue comic persona. The last is the most distasterous, an Adam Sandler movie. Stephen Brill, Adam Sandler’s pal and director of Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds, attempts to force the disparate work of Apatow/Rogan, Owen Wilson and Brill’s brand of the Sandler schtick, sans Sandler, into Drillbit Taylor and the result is utterly brutal.

Owen Wilson stars as the title character in Drillbit Taylor, a homeless criminal who accepts a position as a bodyguard for three nerdy High School freshman being bullied by a nasty senior. Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile and David Dorfman play the desperate nerds Wade, Ryan and Emmit who need protection from Filkins (Alex Frost) who has decided to make their lives hell. Offering their whole allowances week after week in exchange protection, the best bodyguard they could afford is Drillbit who claims to be an ex-military ranger and hides his homelessness.

Initially, Drillbit just wants to rob the boys and sets about stealing their stuff under the guise of helping them. Eventually however, after seeing the boys get brutalized, he decides to train them to take care of themselves. His methods are a joke but damned if they don’t give the boys the confidence to stand up to Frost leading to an inevitable final confrontation.

As often is the case my description brings order to a plot where little order exists. Drillbit Taylor stops and starts and sputters through nearly two hours of unfunny violence and cruelty. The script by Seth Rogan and Kristofer Brown plays as if half finished, filled as it is with cliches like the clueless parents and uncaring teachers, just the kinds of characters Rogan and his co-writer pal Evan Goldberg avoided like the plague in his brilliant script for Superbad. Writing with another Apatow protege Kristofer Brown, with an alleged touch up by the legendary John Hughes, the script for Drillbit Taylor features strongly sympathetic kid characters who unfortunately are transported to the Adam Sandler movie world and are repeatedly abused until we just can’t watch, let alone laugh.

Stephen Brill’s direction has the subtlety and grace of an elephant on a frozen lake bed. Scenes slam into and bang off one another in a nearly random order early on as our heroes are kept from meeting Drillbit till the beginning of the films second act. More diversions keep Drillbit out of the school, where Wilson’s charming con man thrives ever so briefly as he romances Leslie Mann’s clueless teacher, until the third act. The third act which then takes forever to play out to a stunningly violent tet still predictable conclusion. .

What director Brill thinks is funny about the abuse he puts these poor kids through is an absolute puzzle. The film lingers on scenes of violence so ugly and scarring that that the movie loses touch with any sort of reality. Drillbit Taylor becomes merely a blunt instrument attempting to bludgeon audiences into submission. Meanwhile, as Steve Brill tries to bend Rogan and Brown’s characters and Wilson’s act to fit his Sandler movie mold it is as if Brill were bullying them into his movie.

Oddly enough dear reader, if Drillbit Taylor had starred Adam Sandler and not Owen Wilson, it might actually have come out better. Wilson simply isn’t cut out to play Drillbit who is called on to be a rude, uncaring brute who learns to care. Wilson is better suited to playing con men with a heart of gold who can only be redeemed by a good woman as he was in Wedding Crashers or The Big Bounce (not a great movie, but not bad either). No, Drillbit is perfectly suited to Sandler’s manchild, raging id persona who can be believable as an uncaring jerk, as a brutish enforcer and as the teddy bear who learned a valuable lesson.

That is likely due to the direction of Brill who has only really known how to direct Sandler. He was at a loss trying to find a Sandler-esque character in the dismal 2005 comedy Without A Paddle and he is further at a loss in trying to turn Drillbit Taylor into a Sandler movie without Sandler. What you get when he attempts to bend Rogan, Apatow and Wilson to his will is a trainwreck of slapstick violence, low key deadpan and genital based character humor. Oh what an ugly wreck it is.