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:Spoilers eh

[Sancho]

Which is stupid. When you browse to the Slashdot front page and see a story entitled, "Hellboy II review," you should assume that there will be details about Hellboy 2. If you're that sensitive to spoilers, you don't click. We should save the "contains spoilers" tag for serious discussions about plot points, not "may contain information about the subject matter."

Re:Spoilers eh

[Mrs. Grundy]

I know exactly what you mean. It was just yesterday I opened a book by Harold Bloom on novels and just a few paragraphs in I find out the Gilberte marries Robert Saint-Loup somwhere in Proust's Remembrance of Things Past I totally didn't see that coming and now it's ruined for me forever. But I shouldn't have been nosing around in the book in the first place if I didn't want a spoiler.

Re:Iron Man == "perfect A" ?

[JudgeFurious]

Iraq wasn't, Afghanistan was.

It was patriotic and "support the troops-ish" but it fit the material. Tony Stark is an arms manufacturer and those are the current wars being fought where his wares might turn up. If you're going to set this material in current events then Afghanistan and Iraq are the places you put it.

I liked the movie a lot and thought the overt patriotism fit right into the film perfectly. I don't know if I'd give it a 100 but back in my time you had to get a 93 or better to make an "A" and I'm good with that. Mid 90's seems about right for Iron Man to me.