Ho-hum boy

Rating: 5/10 (3 April 2004)

While watching Guillermo del Toro's new film Hellboy, it was easy to see the influence of preceding superhero films in the past five years, specifically the success of Spider-Man in 2002. Spider-man was a commercial success and critics praised the film for its mix of action and the backdrop of an outcast yearning for the love of a friend. Hellboy looks to have taken much of that script and morphed it into a darker, more sinister type of adventure.
In a paragraph, Hellboy is a creature spawned from a portal opened by Nazi's in 1944. He is then raised by humans and released from his underground dwellings to fight the evil unleashed upon mankind. So when the Nazi's conjure up wickedness yet again in 2004, Hellboy and the other freaks of the Department of the Paranormal are all that stands between Armageddon and human survival.
There is a lot going for Hellboy. First and foremost is the remarkable casting of Ron Perlman as Hellboy himself. Perlman is no stranger to being outfitted in latex and costume having starred as Vincent in the television hit Beauty and The Beast in the late 1980's. In fact, his role choices of Blade II, The Island of Dr. Moreau and Star Trek: Nemesis, might not have you immediately recognize him if you met him on a street corner. Only in action films playing the bad guy (Romeo is Bleeding, Alien Resurrection) do we ever get the see the true mug of this behemoth.
Second notch of the belt has to be director del Toro. Previous helmer of such Blade II and the Devil's Backbone, del Toro has proven to be a successful storyteller when the subject matter is dark and sinister.

Third is the interesting Dark Horse comic book character that the movie surrounds. Hellboy doesn't have the human secret identity where a pair of donned glasses trick everyone into believing there could be no commonality between the geek and the hero. Hellboy doesn't have that luxury. He is a giant amongst humans with red skin, shaved down horns protruding from his forehead and a tail hidden only by his fashionable trench coat. He chomps on cigars and blatantly goes against his father's wishes. In short, he is the anti-Peter Parker.
But for all the pros, there are quite a number of cons in Hellboy. First and foremost being the running time. At 133 minutes, I could not remember a film where I watched so many scenes that I thought should have hit the cutting room floor. I felt as if del Toro thought he might not get a green light for a sequel, so he decided instead to make a long movie that should have been sniped by about 45 minutes. Between lining up for tickets and popcorn and then sitting through countless commercials and trailers, I was exhausted before the 2+ hour movie even began. Maybe I was in a bad mood, but I really hadn't counted on spending my entire afternoon to watch a summer-fare type flick.
Also holding back Hellboy from my long term memory banks were the routine special effects. Routine I say because there is nothing new here. Hellboy jumping from building to building was done in Spider-man. The return to ashes demise of the creatures was too similar to the death of vampires in the Blade franchise. And the creature effects on a whole reminded me of what Rick Moranis transformed into in Ghostbusters. So although I won't go as far as to say that the special effects weren't well done, they have just all been done before.
Lastly, I didn't buy the love story. As mentioned, I thought this was a cheap way of trying to copy what made Spider-man so appealing, and it just didn't work. Hellboy and his devil looking sneers and the innocent eyelash bashing of Selma Blair's Liz Sherman. Plllee-eze!
On a whole for every plus, there was a negative which probably makes sense based on my rating of **1/2 stars. The powers of the freaks' were interesting including the David Hyde Pierce voiced Abe Sapien, who can see into the past and eats rotten eggs, but the character of Jeffery Tambor was completely unnecessary and uneven. The humor too was hit and miss. Hellboy fires off more quips that Clint Eastwood did in The Rookie and only about half of them hit the mark.
In all, I give Hellboy a small recommendation. I wouldn't stand in line for a great deal of time, nor would I expect too much out of a comic book adaptation, but if you go in with the right frame of mind, you may walk out thinking you got your money's worth. Me, I couldn't help but think of all the promise I saw in the Hellboy trailers. It looked to be an action filled adventure with a smart ass hero who is outcast by society. Instead, I got a film that was just long, sometimes confusing and now a forethought, was only slightly better than the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

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