“HELLBOY II”: Not Bad, Not Good, Not Ugly

I’m a fan of Hellboy, more accurately I’m a fan of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy. The guy in the picture above this paragraph, that Hellboy. He of the Right Hand of Doom, the cloven hooves, the cigars, the brooding, dark humor, the… well you get the picture right?
Now, I’ve been around long enough to know that films are not comics and you never get a celluloid incarnation of your favorite characters without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Hellboy II was not what I expected, nor wanted, in a Hellboy movie.

Director Guillermo del Toro’s last big movie “Pan’s Labyrinth” is what this Hellboy should be, dark, evil, frightening, twisted. I think maybe he was afraid to go to that well of scary again so soon. I’m sorry Mr. del Toro but my Hellboy is not a victim of slapstick humor, rather he is in the grip of a giant rising from the earth to grind our bones! And shame on you Mike Mignola, co-writer, for letting him go that route.

As LA Filmcutter points out, the snarky one-liners are gone, the dark tones are gone, and as we agreed, this picture never gets off the ground. It’s a watered down version of Hellboy, that attempts to force humor into unfunny moments and is not allowed to be an organic experience. Everything is a big action set piece. Everything is a special effects showcase. Everything is forced and uneven. UGH!

The creature designs and the special effects are terrific but we’ve seen it all before; "Pans Labyrinth", "Harry Potter", "Star Wars". The trip to Troll-ville, or whatever it was, was a lot like Men In Black or even Diagon Alley. Too much of a good thing? Yeah. The problem is, there’s no mystery, no surprise, no holy crap moment of bogeymen jumping out of the dark corners. You never feel like the world is in danger, or that any of the heroes are in danger.

Want a taste of the “real” Hellboy? Go to the book store and pick up one of the many Mike Mignola comics or even Christopher Golden’s Hellboy: The Bones of Giants novel. You’ll get the full brimstoney, gritty, witty, scary Hellboy experience.

The Hellboy Zone