I thought the film was enjoyable. It was fast-paced, had some funny moments, and never took itself very seriously. I don't see it as a flop, either. Internet buzz (and for that matter, advertisement) virtually never translates into actual box office profit. Another recent example, and a pretty large flop, is The Watchmen. Made $185 million worldwide theatrically on a $130 million production budget and an advertising budget of at least $100 million. It had a nice $55 million domestic opening weekend, but that ended up being 51.4% of its profits. Other films have lost even more money, but this was unusual because it was a comic book superhero adaptation with a gigantic amount of press and advertisement which still lost a bunch of money. That's incredibly unusual; I don't think it has ever happened before.
I remember seeing the 2003 Hulk with my entire college team in a classic drive-in movie theater and being astounded at how horrible it was. I could not have been more excited to see any movie on a real drive-in theater, and could not have been more dejected by the time it was over. The '08 version is not comparable to that abortion. It was an above average marvel movie, in the same vein as Iron Man and far better than ultra-cheesy trash like Fantastic Four. Definitely has its faults and falls into the cookie cutter blockbuster style at times, but if you enjoyed Iron Man, you would enjoy the newest Hulk.
I thought curiosity would get the better of more people is what I mean. I really didn't think the movie was crap. It followed the horror/ disaster movie archetype pretty well. I also believe in the box office power of Sam Jackson.