Monster Mash

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2005)

I came into watching Hellboy with mixed emotions over what to expect, and hey, guess what? I'm leaving with mixed emotions! In what appears to be a big stretch, Ron Perlman plays a big lug. Well, OK, let's be fair, instead of a big hairy lug like he played in Beauty and the Beast, or a very odd lug in City of Lost Children, in Hellboy he stretches and plays a big RED lug. With horns. His name is Hellboy, a demon child birthed by an experiment in the third Reich to start the fall of Mankind. Or Something. To be honest, the plot is really ridiculous, something about Rasputin, an unstoppable third Reich assassin, and doomsday. The parts where it somewhat gets interesting is Perlman's dry delivery on his inability to pick up chicks when they don't really go for a big red lug with horns driving a garbage truck. Finally, if a film has to resort to casting Jeffery Tambor as an action star, well, you've got problems from the start.