Sometimes movies just aren’t very good, and no one is to blame. And sometimes movies are so long, drawn out, boring, pretentious and unnecessarily gruesome they make you want to drive a school bus through a crowded Waldenbooks full of Hollywood screenwriters looking for their next big hit screenplay. “Hannibal” makes you want to soak your clothes in gasoline before getting on the bus.Hollywood used to crank out formulaic movies that were easy to dismiss. You had the whole slew of frat guys on vacation movies like “Fraternity Vacation” and “Fraternity Vacation 2.” These were just boobs and butts with a plot that was more of an excuse to show boobs and butts than a real story. Then we had the whole period of action kissfests.Today, Hollywood is still cranking out movies according to a formula, but now that formula is to make movies that look like great films. They have all the trappings of an Oscar contender, and most people go thinking they are watching a good movie.All we get are movies with decent cinematography, competent direction and even decent performances, but they lack real substance. Some of these films are just like great French cuisine. You sit down to a plate with all sorts of squiggly lines of chocolate with sorbet dipping areas on the side and a spring of cilantro on top, but in the center of your plate is just some butter-soaked snail cut open like a rose. You look at it and think it must be good, you paid $75 for it. But if you found it crawling in your garden, you’d step on it without a second thought.That is “Hannibal” in a nutshell. Ridley Scott directed one of the most vacant movies of his career, and he may not even know it yet because everyone is running around talking about it like that snail on a plate. “Hannibal” must be good. It looks good. It has enough atmosphere to make Jupiter look like a barren asteroid. It has enough names in it that it makes Saturday night at the Viper Room look like a Wednesday afternoon in the automotive department at Wal-Mart. So why is it so bad?First off, the story is about Special Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) who is back looking for Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), the wayward cannibal who went globe-trotting at the end of “Silence of the Lambs.” Starling has been set up as bate by her own boss, Paul Krendler, played goofily by Ray Liota. Krendler is hired by the only victim of Lecter to survive, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman). Verger wants revenge.Lecter comes flying back from Florence when he sees his favorite agent in danger, but only after what seemed like an eternity of subplot surrounding an Italian cop trying to catch Lecter on his own for the $3 million reward.With all these people after him, Lecter never loses control of the situation. Even when he appears to, it is only for the purpose of acting upon his own bloody urges and getting Starling to pay a little attention to him.Everybody who screws with Starling and Lecter gets their comeuppance. For some reason, everyone seems much more disgusting than the cannibal who is supposed to be our hero.Nothing about this movie really works. It lacks all of the suspense and intrigue of “Silence of the Lambs,” which worked because it was a good, old fashioned mystery when you broke it down.When you take the five seconds necessary to deconstruct “Hannibal,” you realize that there is no mystery here. It has nothing interesting to say about the characters it limply portrays. Besides being pretty to look at and sometimes beautiful to listen to, there is nothing to sink your teeth into.”Hannibal” is more predictable than a room full of TV psychics at an all-u-can-eat shrimp buffet. This is not quality fare, it just pretends to be good. Don’t buy it. A few startling moments akin to a cat jumping into frame are surrounded by what feel like days of boring tension wrapped in hokey special effects that highlight gross displays better suggested than acted out.Apparently the book by Thomas Harris was even worse, so perhaps this is an example of an amazing save. Still, if you can’t find something better to see this weekend, go rent “Silence of the Lambs” again because “Hannibal” is so boring and pointless you will consider starting a fight with the seat kicker behind you just to get the blood flowing back into your extremities.*