Hulk (not, apparently, “the” Hulk) is colossal — a colossal mess, that is. Director Ang Lee may have conceived it as an emotionally intense psychodrama, but the end result is a movie as conflicted as the titular green-colored behemoth. Intermittently impressive — at least on a technical level — it more than casually resembles the ’70s series (starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, who shares a cameo in the film with Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee), itself based on the Lee-Jack Kirby comic book. And that turns out to be a major liability. It’s one thing to pay homage to an old TV show, quite another to end up looking — and playing — like one of its cheesier episodes.

At 150 million bucks, that’s a lot of fromage.

Not everyone knows the Hulk as well as, say, Spider-Man, but he’s not exactly an unknown commodity either. Nor is he an especially complicated creature. As a result of genetic manipulation and an accidental megadose of gamma radiation, mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner (a so-so Eric Bana) becomes a ‘roided-out force of nature run amuck. He’s the poster boy for the dangers of repressed rage, the towering giant the powerless part of us secretly wishes to harness. The dimmest kid on the block can absorb his “backstory” as fast as sucking down a glass of chocolate milk. But Lee and his writers (John Turman, Michael France and producer James Schamus) can’t stop explaining everything, pointing out the obvious, talking down to us. Where Ang Lee should be simple, he’s too often complicated; where he should strive for complexity, he opts for simple-mindedness. His use of split-screens and other flashy, small-screen opticals is welcome at first, as they effectively mirror both the comic book and TV show. But soon they become as overused as his persistent, claustrophobic close-ups, making Frederic Elmes’ cinematography seem that much uglier. Once in a while, the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon director strikes gold — the Hulk’s rampage at the lab and later trashing of several Army tanks, as well as a disturbing Ray Harryhausen-style face-off between the Hulk and some mutant dogs. But there are too many lulls, way too much talking heads exposition. It takes nearly 45 minutes for Banner to lose his temper and transform into a raging beast — and isn’t that what we paid to see?

As for the Crabby Green Giant himself, FX house Industrial Light & Magic gets mixed grades. One marvels at the monster’s sheer size and musculature, the movement of his hair, the way he sweats, grimaces, shows anger in eyes, slides a few inches after landing on his oversized feet. What doesn’t work — at all — are his dorky leaps into space. In one shot he bounces around the desert like a circus flea singed by a magnifying glass, sending the audience into fits of giggles. (You half expect to hear the ”boing” “boing” cartoon sound effect.) ILM goofed in making him too big (yes, there’s such a thing, guys). He’s ridiculously overscaled here — two wide, too out of proportion to make us forget, even for a moment, that he was created entirely in a computer.

Hulk fans are saying the film will succeed or fail purely on the basis of how strongly we “buy” ILM’s version of the Marvel character. But that’s not what’s going to be Hulk’s undoing, it’s the movie’s wretched script, lax pacing and (mostly) cardboard acting. It wants to be stark and textured, only to repeatedly reveal the greasepaint beneath the greasepaint. “There’s money to be made, and lots of it,” says one character. (Was he talking about summer movies?) If I were Ang Lee I wouldn’t make my down payment on that new Bel-Air estate just yet.

Kyle Counts is film critic for the Gay and Lesbian Times