Search hard enough in the mountain of one-liners and you'll find a paper thin story.

Rating: Null/10 (11 April 2004)

First off, I didn't go into this movie with very high expectations. I could already tell from the preview that it was going to be mostly special effects, with a mediocre at best storyline, but of course the producers would try to milk the story for everything it's worth by dragging on the less exciting talking sequences and ocassionaly throwing in the high-flying action sequences. At first I wasn't going to see it, but then a new preview appeared showing off all the good comments critics had to say. "Ok my friends want to see it, I'll go."
~(MILD SPOILERS, NOTHING MAJOR, BUT MAY HAVE YOU GUESSING)~
As I've mentioned, the story isn't going to turn any heads. Madman (and Nazis) tries to do something uber-evil, but his party gets crashed by the good guys yet he still somewhat completes his goal, but gets (what would seem to be) destroyed. (This is when our hero is found as a baby) Fast forward 60 years, hero's all grown up, blah blah blah, he's a freak, he's got a crush on a girl, bad guy's brought back from the dead, our hero has some girl problems, something bad happens to someone our hero loves, now it's personal, que special effects, climatic battle, roll credits (no teaser for a sequel?! What a jip! :P).
~(SPOILERS END)~
Hellboy isn't as bad as I may have made it sound, not even close. He's fun to look at, with some pretty good make-up effects on Hellboy and all the other freaks, and there's some clever writing (with the exception of "There are things that go bump in the night, and we are the ones who bump back". That's a horrid line.) But there's enough clever one-liners to make you chuckle and in some cases, the entire audience roar. The movie would be much worse without these, I think they serve as a waker-upper to compensate for the *meh* talking parts. The action sequences aren't anything that make you jump out of your seat hollering at the top of your lungs "THAT WAS AWESOME!" but they offer a fair share of the over the top fighting you'd expect in a superhero flick.
Bottom line, it's better than HULK but not as good as X2: XMEN UNITED. I say wait for the DVD. 6/10