Pretty darn good, and that's coming from someone who hates comic book (***)

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2004)

I'm not a fan of comic books (or most comic book movies), so I wasn't too interested in seeing "Hellboy" until I heard that Guillermo del Toro was directing it. When it comes to dark and intense films about creepy-crawly things, he's one of the best ("The Devil's Backbone", "Cronos", "Mimic" and especially the awesome "Blade II").
The hero of this story was a baby demon who slipped through a portal to hell that was opened by Satan-worshipping Nazis at the end of WWII. Under the tutelage of the kindly human professor (John Hurt) who raised him, he became a crusader against evil. It's a ridiculous story, but no more ridiculous than most movies based on comic books, and the well-developed characters make it seem almost believable.
Hellboy himself (played to perfection by Ron Perlman) is quite a fascinating character. Raised by humans, he struggles to be normal despite his gigantic muscles, red skin, and huge horns (that he sands down every morning). He also has a wickedly sarcastic sense of humor (after putting down one monster he says "I'm fireproof. You're not."), and his pining for a fellow freak named Liz (a melancholy human firestarter played with the right dark-eyed loneliness by Selma Blair) is touching.
Even though the characters are the best thing about this movie, I found the story pretty compelling as well, as it seems far more influenced by the gothic horror of H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker than those cheesy Marvel comic stories.
Lovecraft's influence in particular is present here, his indescribably creepy, gigantic, tentacled monsters waiting in some dark dimension for their chance to take over the world. Barker's work is felt in the sprawling hellscapes, satanic machinery, and a grisly reanimated corpse used as a puppet.
In a nutshell, if you like lots of action mixed with the dark and grotesque (basically if you liked "Blade II"), "Hellboy" will probably do it for you. "Spiderman" it ain't.