HULK is a true Marvel comic book movie, in that it weds the campiness of the superhero comic genre with the kind of psychological character realism that Stan Lee pioneered in comics.

The Hulk, more than any other superhero, is a representation of psychological neurosis. A Google search on "The Incredible Hulk" turns up "a case history of the incredible Hulk [by Leonard Samson, Ph.D] submitted to the American Psychological Association" — although the webpage in question won't load. (Leonard Samson, aka "Doc Samson," is a major character in the Hulk comics... and he happens to be a psychiatrist.)

The film also suggests that the Hulk is a monster birthed from repressed traumatic memory. (Bruce Banner describes his first experience of being the Hulk as "like being born.") Banner's transformation into the Hulk is triggered at one point by recollected trauma — about his mother. Dreams, those messages from the unconscious, are prevalent. One dream shows Banner seeing himself as the Hulk in the mirror; the not-so-jolly green giant attacks him and calls him "Puny Banner!" (a line from the comics, fraught with Freudian undertones).

It stands to reason that the movie's denouement comes when Banner (as the Hulk) deals with his father issues. In a nifty bit of parallelism, Banner's love interest Betty Ross has father issues of her own to resolve, and at the movie's end she and her dad have closed the gap in spite of their differences.

So the various critical comparisons between HULK and Greek tragedy aren't too far off. Though HULK is closer to a pop psych manual like Men Are From Mars... than it is to Oedipus Rex. Besides, Oedipus may have killed his father and married his mother, but he didn't toss around chariots like a supercharged Maximus.

And the Hulk's bark is worse than his bite. For all that tank-tossing and "puny Banner" stuff, he never erupts into a truly murderous rampage. He's no Mr. Hyde to Banner's Dr. Jekyll. Hyde was a monster created by a Victorian culture that repressed the good doctor's improper social impulses. But the Hulk lives in a culture radically reversed, where everyone is encouraged to express whatever they feel. If anything, Banner is punished for trying not to express all the nasty feelings he has inside.

Yet his Id is of the adolescent kind. He's like the comics-lovin' nerd who reads The Hulk as his imaginitive release for pent-up rage against his parents, his teachers, the school bullies, and everyone who has looked at him and thought, "Puny weakling."

Case closed. Five cents, please.

And go watch HULK. Great acting, directing, editing, cinematography, scoring, and action. If you don't enjoy it, you just might need therapy.