Movie Review, Hellboy II

Although I'm not sure the corporate overlords will let me retroactively expense a movie ticket, I wanted to take a few minutes to write my review of Hellboy II. It's been a pretty good summer for movies already: but Wall-E and Iron Man were pretty much perfect A movies. I was a big fan of the original Hellboy comic, the first movie, and of Pan's Labyrinth- my fear was that it could only go downhill. And I was wrong. VERY wrong. Read on for my review which will be mostly spoiler free. Getting a babysitter is enough work that I don't get to see nearly as many movies these days as I would like. But I knew Hellboy II had to be sitter-worthy. But I was scared going in. I always thought of Hellboy as being a comic with thick chunky lines. Bold colors. Broad brush strokes. Guillermo Del Toro's previous film is Pan's Labyrinth, and if ever a film maker has made a movie with detailed, intricate, subtle work, it was him. I was afraid that he would take a film that was so unlike the comic book that I would lose out on a favorite director and a favorite comic book at the same time. But i was so wrong.

The movie starts off far more funny than the first Hellboy. This is very much in keeping with the quirky ad campaign that has been promoting the film (the inside the actor's studio commercial for example is quite funny). Hellboy is once again Ron Pearlman- the genius bit of casting that made the first movie so great is a huge win for any sequel. He's tired of working for the BPRD in secret and is going out of his way to be spotted by the real world. But a mythos of ancient elves is working to retrieve and unify some widgets to awaken a golden army of indestructible robots, and it's up to our heroes to stop it from happening.

The elven world is very much Del Toro's designs. Likewise, an extended sequence through a secret troll market hidden under the brooklyn bridge gives him a great canvas to paint his stylistic genius. And seeing the big and clumsy Hellboy smash through it is incredibly satisfying. The action sequences are all excellent, and the final robot battle is very fun and well done.

All the while this is done with some nice plot twists for the major characters. A love interest for Abe comes along. A new good guy is sent in from the BPRD to reign in our uncontrollable hero: Krauss is voiced by Seth Macfarlane basically doing his fish char from American Dad, but inside a wacky suit controlled by ectoplasm vapors. Selma Blair is back as Liz: they give her some good lines and a few good sequences, but she's mainly a support role.

So Guillermo Del Toro was able to work within Mike Mignola's world. He put his own thumbprints all over the work, and the whole comes out better than the sum of the parts. And this makes me all the more excited for the Hobbit, where I have all the same concerns: Tolkein and Jackson will give him even bigger shoes to fill, and now I think he can do it.

Comments

Re:Sequal? Squeal?

[sconeu]

Give Taco a break. His spell checker wanted to spell it "SQL".

Re:don't waste your money

[ODiV]

6) New agent hard nosed

Hard nosed? Quite the opposite, in fact.

I didn't really care for the character though. Seemed to lack substance.

Re:Spoilers eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning: This device contains matter, which is known by the state of California to cause warpage of space and time. This device also contains extraordinary amounts of stored energy in its physical matrix. Handle with care.

Best Part of Hellboy II

[Jack9]

I'm not a baby, I'm a tumor.

Re:Spoilers eh

[XxtraLarGe]

Hey, at least they're being honest.

Bah, they're being paranoid. Why don't they just engrave a message in our corneas that reads "Warning: Life causes Death."

Re:If he's doing the Hobbit next then...

[SuiteSisterMary]

But c'mon, man! Shoggoth pudding! That would be awesome :)

(deep announcer voice) Kids go CRAZY for Shoggoth Pudding!
(cut to a bunch of kids in straight jackets; one staring at the wall drooling, one banging his head rythmically against a wall, one lying on his back and gnawing on a toe, then using the now-bleeding toe to draw MC Escher-like designs on the wall. In front of each is a spoon and an empty Shoggoth Pudding container)

Re:Spoilers eh

[reverseengineer]

If someone does that study, and finds the expected 100% correlation between life and death, the report of that study on /. will undoubtedly be greeted with "Correlation != causation" posts.