Supposedly, society’s rules have been keeping the lusty Sebastian down. The fact that he already lives in a well-defended world, sequestered on the outskirts of society, doesn’t seem to matter much. The point is that, once invisible, Sebastian can follow his female coworkers into the bathroom, watch them pee, and undo their blouses while they sleep at their workstations. It sounds like an eight-year-old boy’s sex fantasy rather than any kind of motivation that would lie dormant beneath the mind of a scientific genius. It’s a good thing none of the characters thought to hire a few prostitutes to calm Sebastian’s nerves because it would have brought the story to a screeching halt.

Everything that follows Sebastian’s tortuous and visually stunning fully-visible anatomical transformation, from flesh to blank space, is a flailing search for plot, theme, purpose, and even for a protagonist. For a script that could have gone in a variety of rich directions of social satire integral to Verhoeven’s finest film’s (see Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers), Hollow Man takes the path most chosen; that of any sundry action film with a handful of senseless murders along with escalating explosions leading up to a fiery finale. Along with visibility, Kevin Bacon’s character also loses his ego driven identity, making what should have been the crux of the story into a goofy protagonist hand-off to Elizabeth Shue’s (Leaving Las Vegas) role as sexy scientist Linda McKay.

Paul Verhoeven is a director undaunted by laborious technical demands in his films. So much so that he seems to have chosen the follow up to his sci-fi satire coup Starship Troopers (which was five years in the making) based solely on the challenge of capturing ‘invisibility’ on the big screen. There just isn’t enough subtext in Hollow Man to carry the weight of proposed excitement that the movie sets up for itself. For Sebastian Cane to morph into the essential kind of monster that the story demands, he would need far greater political and personal motives than a depraved libido and gut wrenching jealousy over his ex-girlfriend screwing their fellow lab assistant Matt Kensington (Josh Brolin - Mimic).

By the time Matt miraculously recovers from a nasty crow bar stomach gash to assist Linda in quelling their elusive enemy, you may find yourself wishing that all the characters would just die already. Verhoeven is on an every-other-movie-is-lame syndrome (Basic Instinct, Showgirls), so it’s not such a surprise that Hollow Man is a let down. The premise is flawed from the start because, the fact is, being invisible is really not as interesting as it sounds. Let’s say that one of the X-Men had the power of becoming invisible at will. It sounds alright, but it’s not any big deal compared to flashy characters like Cyclops or Wolverine. Hollow Man’s most enjoyable scenes come in the transformation scenes where veins, muscles, organs, and bones appear and disappear. But a few impressive scenes do not a decent movie make. For all of the uncomfortable time Kevin Bacon served in a hot, green skintight suit to look like, well, nothing, it’s an ironic similarity to the cinematic value of Hollow Man.

College Professor/scientific genius Sherman Klump has only one thing standing between himself and marital bliss with his lovely colleague Denise Gaines (Janet Jackson - Poetic Justice); his ultra-obnoxious alter ego Buddy Love. It’s bad enough that Buddy inhabits Sherman’s DNA, but when Sherman finally extracts Buddy’s spastic genetic portion from his system, his evil twin poses a whole new threat. As Buddy tries to steal Sherman’s temporary youth serum (worth $150,000,000), the Klump family prepare for the wedding, and Sherman stars to lose his intelligence as a side effect of removing Buddy Love’s DNA from his body. There isn’t one flat scene, and by the time a certain oversexed hamster takes on mammoth proportions from a bad dose of the youth serum, Papa Klump has already done a little nipping in the fountain of youth, while Granny is busy proving she doesn’t need any youth elixirs to amend her vitality.

A hair of the laboratory pet dog sends Buddy Love’s already volatile personality into a new orbit when the strand combines with Buddy’s DNA during the gene extraction, making him part dog. Not only does Buddy have an uncontrollable need to take newspaper into the bathroom, and sniff at women, but he also can’t resist chasing cats, or a game of fetch. The high energy level of Murphy’s multi-dimensional characters is meticulously consistent across the canvas of the movie, as are the palpable contributions of actors in even minor roles. The fine-tuned collaboration between the film’s ensemble of cast, crew, and director is a cinematic marvel of cohesion in itself.

Along with fellow "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy has honed his comedic talents over the years to a quick-silver approach that oozes jokes and spits droll possibilities while keeping a sense of restraint and maturity. Murphy maintains a strong anchor in the bedrock from which his comedy originates. It allows him seemingly involuntary flinches of buffoonery that set him apart from lesser comedians like Jim Carey or Chris Rock, who seem to always have to push for their laughs. For example, one tumultuous roar comes from a story about a breast mishap that Granny tells to her hairdresser. By the time you realize that Murphy has merely been telling a joke, you’re already awash in laughter that Murphy has effectively dumped out, as if from a bucket. Murphy is the closest thing to Richard Pryor that comedy has today and he has made huge strides in improving his talents throughout his career. However sterile and poor his recent efforts in Holy Man (1998) and Bowfinger (1999) may have been, Eddie Murphy is capable of profound greatness.