Hellboy II




So I saw this over the weekend with Dr. Kimenstein, The Ant Queen, Queen Kamayhemmayhem, Mr. Mayhem, and the Baroness. Originally we had hoped to see the new Batman flick, but it was sold out. So instead we saw Hellboy II and I'm glad I did. Before I review it, though, let me tell you a few things. One, I'm not a big fan of the print Hellboy. He's fun for a while, but eventually I found him kind of one note; it's possibly I didn't read enough of his stuff, or the wrong stuff. As far as the first film goes, I thought they did a great job with the character stuff, but a bad job with some of the effects and more importantly with the plot stuff. The climax was weak and it just seemed to go off the rails. I was mystified by the hardcore fans the flick has; I liked it but I didn't think it was that awesome. Still, since I enjoyed the first one and the work of the director, Guillermo Del Toro, I wanted to check it out.

I really had a blast with it. Yeah, it's not as character-focused as the first one, and yeah, they short change Liz, turning her basically into a hen-pecking wife figure. Which is really too bad. On the other hand they introduce Johann Kraus, who's basically an ecotoplasmic spirit in a diving suit, and he was very entertaining; and this time I found the plot more engaging and the climax more appropriate. I'll take gear filled golden robots fighting Hellboy and each other and then a fight on huge gears over a battle with badly done CG any day of the week. The costumes and sets are also amazing and the film creates a vibrant world of the supernatural. I also enjoyed that the villain, while overly proud and stubborn, is not truly evil and his goal is more noble than merely "we want to bring about the end of the world". The cast is excellent as always and I barely even noticed that Doug Jones was now providing the voice to Abe Sapien.