Hulk? Yes. Incredible? No.

At least the new version of "The Incredible Hulk" is better than the woefully misguided 2003 version, though one would be hard-pressed to think of what isn't. And the fanboys in the audience at the midnight Thursday screening certainly seemed pleased with what they got.

What they got was scenes of a monster getting mad and throwing things, like a little boy having a tantrum.

The monster and the things he throws -- and a great deal of the rest of the film -- are rendered on a computer. Poorly.

Perhaps all the great technicians of computer imagery were off making "Prince Caspian" and "Kung Fu Panda," but the people involved in creating the special effects for "The Incredible Hulk" have no grasp of how to give their effects weight or breadth.

It looks cheesy, and that goes for the Hulk himself, too. The filmmakers couldn't even keep to a single scale -- the Hulk frequently changes sizes, sometimes several times within the same scene. That's worse than careless; that's inept.

And yet, the film begins promisingly. The whole gamma-ray incident and initial transition from mild-mannered scientist to temperamental hulking monster are efficiently covered during the opening titles. We are hopeful that, because these necessary scenes are dispensed with so quickly, the rest of the movie can be spent developing a story.

Alas, we come to realize that the most interesting part of the film is this story of the monster's origin. The rest of the plot is insipid.

Serious actor Edward Norton stars as Bruce Banner, the gamma-ized scientist whose body, whenever he becomes angry, resembles that of Barry Bonds.

Banner is looking for a way to cure his mutated blood, while an evil Army general (serious actor William Hurt) tries to capture him for mad-scientist experiments.

The general tracks him to the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where they engage in a dash across the rooftops obviously staged by someone who really liked "The Bourne Ultimatum."

Banner gets mad and turns into the Hulk, and the next morning he wakes up in Guatemala. Sure, he's 10 feet tall (or 20, or 8, depending on the scene), but Guatemala is a full 4,500 miles from Rio, and there are some pretty tall mountains along the way.

The filmmakers are iffy on the details all the way through, so, 17 days later, Banner has walked from Guatemala to Virginia. Here he finds his old girlfriend, Betty Ross, played by Liv Tyler.

She knows what he is capable of, and she is aware of his violence; if she were to be afraid of him, or at least wary, it would be understandable and narratively interesting. But she accepts him unquestionably, and yet another chance for a thin glimmer of depth is lost.

Norton, who also serves as producer, adds little to the character of Banner. But he is infinitely more interesting than the alter-ego character of the Hulk, who merely breaks things.

And because the Hulk is impervious to everything from hand grenades to machine guns mounted on the side of a helicopter, he generates neither our sympathy nor our concern.

Director Louis Leterrier tries to pepper the film with cameos of people with a connection to the franchise (including the late Bill Bixby in a televised clip from "The Courtship of Eddie's Father").

But at the end, he includes a cameo by someone so current and wrapped up in the fortunes of Marvel comics that his appearance is self-serving and utterly shameless.