another interesting failure

Rating: 3/10 (10 August 2008)

I saw this movie because I always sort of intended to see it, and I wanted to watch it while I still had a chance to see "Hellboy 2" in the theater if I enjoyed it. At this point I'm doubting whether the sequel would be worth it, and really wondering why they bothered to make it at all since this first film didn't really set the world on fire. Seems like "Pan's Labrynth" was a big enough hit I guess the director can do whatever he wants to now. But that was a far better movie than "Hellboy." The only thing that I really enjoyed in "Hellboy" was the way that Ron Perlman played the character. I like his attitude and his style.
The movie itself is pretty bad. The villains are so generic and so poorly performed by Biddy Hodson and Karel Roden that I felt they belonged in a direct to video movie. The monster they have summoned or whatever is just a sort of typical CGI thing with a lot of tentacles. Hellboy fights this monster once and it's pretty interesting, but he just kept fighting that same monster through the entire film which got pretty boring, and even the big final creature looked like just a larger version of the same thing. The story is extremely predictable and nothing interesting ever happens between Hellboy and the federal agent (Rupert Evans). I didn't feel compelled by the romantic angle either, it was like watching a high school soap opera.
Some good action scenes and a nice performance by Perlman but otherwise a waste of time.