Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, James Dodd, Seth McFarlane, Jeffrey Tambore, John Hurt, Luke Goss
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Mike Mignola
Studio: Universal
I really like Hellboy. I own the graphic novels, the toys, and saw both movies. I thought the first film was uneven, but it was a valiant effort to adapt a tricky property. The comic book's a very mannered affair that doesn't translate visually or storywise to film. This forces the movies to be somewhere between Ghostbusters and Men in Black with a fantasy backbone. Hellboy and his friends crack wise and do battle with a hoard of beautiful looking monsters in our world and the underworld.
It's a difficult balance to maintain when a film has so much going on. It's a film that deals with growing up, being different, golden robots, relationships, drunken monster men, cheap Mexican beer, anti-German sentiment, and the bureaucracy of the man. It succeeds most of the time, but when the film fails, it falls with a pronounced thud. Abe Sapien is a wonderful foil for Hellboy, but he's a complete dud as the star of his own subplot. His romance with an exiled princess just doesn't carry the weight the film wants it to have. It feels forced, and it drags the film down. It's a little too operatic for the blue collar protagonists.
However, Hellboy's relationship with his girlfriend Liz is a strong source of comedy and bickering; it works because they play it mostly funny but keep a core a real emotion in there. That nugget of real emotion drives most of the film's gags, fights, and set pieces; when the film looses that nugget, it weakens.
Writing: Pretty good. I would say it's tighter than the previous film. The dialogue is funnier and the plot is more focused. The villains sound a bit too much like generic fantasy characters, but that's mostly the point. They also provide a great contrast to the very modern style of the protagonists.
Directing: Del Toro and company have created a great look for the film.
Acting: Perlman is excellent as the lead. He was the best about the first movie, and he doesn't dissapoint. He has a certain rough charm as Hellboy that really works on screen, and he can sell it quite well through the make up. He and Doug Jones do an uproarious drunk male bonding scene together that must have been difficult to make seem laid back after a combined 7 hours of makeup between the two of them.
Speaking of which, the cast works together quite nicely, despite most of them being covered in makeup and posthetics. Also, some of them have voice actors doing the dialogue with someone else in the body suit. Somehow, Seth McFarlane and Perlman have a good chemistry despite not being on the set together.
Selma Blair does a good job, and Jeffrey Tambore brings the funny when he gets the chance.
Editing: I could have done without Abe making googy eyes for like fifteen minutes, but otherwise, a decent job.
Sound: Some great little noises for all the creatures, monsters, and magic; it sounded believable.
Soundtrack/Score: Good mood music with some great soundtrack singles. It was also quite nice to hear The Eels in a movie.
Self-Awareness: Yes, it's a weird fucking movie that revels in it's own weird. It also knows how to laugh at the sheer untamed bizarre it's filled with.
Overall Rating: When it works it's wonderful, but a few scenes are definitely better used as bathroom breaks rather than entertainment.
-Pete
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